Review-cum-Refresher for Teacher Trainees - RNIASE and PMIASE

Review cum Refresher workshop for selected teacher trainees of Cuttack, Kendrapada, Sambalpur and Bargarh district were held on 27th and 28th June, 2011 at RNIASE Cuttack and PMIASE, Sambalpur respectively. The workshop mainly focused designing lesson plan integrating EDUKIT. An overall discussion on the annual work plan prepared for monitoring the school teachers at the school level was made.

Workshop on Multiple Natures by Steven Rudolph

A two day workshop on Multiple Nature and Multiple Intelligence was held in Delhi. It was conducted by Steven Rudolph, Director Education, JIVA Institute. 5 members from the Orissa Team attended this workshop.

Review-cum-Refresher for DE Orissa Team

A three day internal Review cum Refresher workshop (Residential) was held on 9^th, 10^th & 11^th June at Gopalpur on Sea. The workshop focused on work plans for individual schools and the modus operandi for achieving of the same. Apart from this, coordinators were trained on preparing documentary movies. A documentary movie was also shot on the fisherman community residing at Gopalpur.

DE Working Group Meeting

The DE Working Group Meeting under the Chairmanship of the Additional Secretary SME Department, Shri IC Barda, OAS (SAG) was held on the 30^th of May 2011. The meeting started at 10.50 am and ended at 11.45 am. The other members who attended the meeting are as follows:

• Aparti Mallick, OAS (S), Joint Secretary, SME Department
• Subrata Sarkar, State Program Manager, AIFT

The following decisions were taken as part of the meeting:

• The annual plan based on the output indicators (Program Booklet on Syllabus Based Learning using Computers), for the Secondary Schools will be sent to the teacher trainees by the SME Department.
• Annual plan for the Upper Primary Schools need to be reconciled with Samadhan before being issued by the department.
• AIFT will depute its trainers to visit the department once a week, to give inputs to the trainees for better use of computers as part of their day to day work.
• OPEPA will send their hardware experts to the 52 Secondary Schools included as part of the DE program, to have a look at the hardware problems and make the non-functional systems functional.

Vote for AIF

In case you have an account on facebook click on the link below and cast your vote
http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/134159765-a-i-f

CB Satpathy

CB Satpathy revered as Guruji by Sai devotees, was in Bhubaneshwar recently - as part of a book release ceremony (Bhagabata Part III), authored by him. I was fortunate enough rather blessed to be part of that meeting and had a chance to hear him speak after a long time. His sublime words touched the innermost chords of ones heart and made most of the audience, calm down and ruminate on the nature of soul and life till the end of the meeting and for sometime even after that - which I am sure of. Although high on the spiritual ladder he has that quintessential quality of connecting with the uninitiated at the mundane level and making him understand the most profoundest of metaphysical and occult subjects in a very matter of fact manner. My thoughts go back to 2002 when I had personally met him for the first time in Delhi. His bearing and aura makes a tremendous impact on the each and every one who has met him even for a moment, taking most of them off at a tangent - in restructuring/changing their entire course of  life forever towards the better. I very clearly remember the last words with which he ended the meeting - "every single one of us get a divine inspiration at some point in our life but we are unable to recognize and catch hold of it." I got hold of the book "Shirdi Sai Baba and other Perfect Masters" authored by him and have since compled reading the book. It is an excellent book - partly autobiographical, in that it traces the spiritual transformation of Guruji from the year 1989, which marks a watershed year in his life. This book is a must read for anyone and everyone having an interest in matters spiritual and an excellent study in oriental mysticism.

DE Team - Internal Review

A Digital Equalizer (DE) review meeting was held on the 13^th of May, 2011 in the DE State Resource Centre (SRC), SCERT, Bhubaneswar. The Meeting started at 10.00 am and ended at 6.00 pm.

 The meeting was attended by the following participants:  

J. Sundarakrishnan,                            Director, Digtal Equalizer Program, AIFT

Subrat Sarkar                                     SPM, Digital Equalizer Program, AIFT, Orissa

Anup Mohanty                                    Zonal Coordinator

Santanu Kumar Mishra                         Trainer, SCERT, Bhubaneswar

Gulty Rath                                         Trainer, SCERT, Bhubaneswar

Mrutunjay Mishra                                Trainer, RNIASE, Cuttack

Sanjay Biswal                                    Trainer, PMIASE, Sambalpur

Shanti Bhusan Padhi                           Trainer, DPIASE, Berhampur

Manoranjan Bhoi                                Trainer, DIET, Dolipur

Mohan Chand Padhan                         Trainer, DIET, Sambalpur

Chinmaya Kumar Sahoo                      Trainer, DIET, Khallikote

Pankaj Kumar Pati                             Monitoring Expert, Sambalpur & Bargarh

Jyoti Prakash Sahu                            Monitoring Expert, Ganjam & Gajapati

Soumya Ranjan Rout                          Monitoring Expert, Kendrapada

The following issues were discussed as part of the meeting:    

•  The core objectives of the program were discussed by Director, DE.          
• The main advantage of having this new model (Centralised Resource Centre Training Model) was highlighted by the Director.
• Zone wise presentations were made by trainers and concerned monitoring expert.
•  Zone wise training status and output indicators were discussed threadbare.
•   Director laid stress on the initiatives we can incorporate to achieve our output indicators at the school level.
• Director focused mainly on field level issues such as teacher training and support at the school level by the monitoring expert.

The following decisions were taken as part of the meeting:

• Effective utilisation of the time by the monitoring expert spent at the school level. This presupposes a thorough planning on the part of the coordinators before they start visiting a particular school.
• Monitoring expert to give time to classroom observation to validate whether the concerned teacher is imparting pedagogy sections effectively.
• Sensitization workshops for teacher facilitators to be conducted at the Zonal Resource Centres   by the monitoring experts, on a monthly basis .
• The SCERT Trainers were instructed to conduct workshops (Value Addition in integrating technology in teaching) for the Teacher Educators at the respective Zonal Centres after the completion of 18 days of training at SRC.
• The teacher educators of the six zonal centres to conduct training sessions for teacher trainees undergoing training at the Zonal Resource Centres(ZRC).
• Zone wise competition for trained teachers designing good projects and conducting lab transactions.
• Monitoring experts shall make a register and make a note of student’s (rand picked) views on the DE Program.
• Monitoring experts will make a note of how students are conducting lab transactions in presence of the teacher.
• Monitoring expert will observe as to how teachers are conducting lab transactions effectively using EDUKIT.
• The Coordinators were asked to make DST and submit it by 3^rd of July.