My Reflections-6

Rise Brothers Rise

Sixth week of the E-Skills scholarship programme. Many thanks to Robert for giving the charge of the class to Jesse, our guest moderator. The topic for this week is very appropriate in Indian context. Large class is a reality and it is not likely to disappear in the near future. Even in my institute sometimes I have teach a batch of eighty teachers. How can we teach large class without lecturing? I think teachers can break the monotony of lecture classes by adding variety and making students do cooperative tasks. “To teach is to engage students in learning; thus teaching consists of getting students involved in the active construction of knowledge”. Teacher can also divide the large group into smaller groups and make them do a few tasks. Using technology is the best way to engage students and promote learning in a large class. Power point is the simplest tool to use in a large class. Teachers have to include a lot of visuals and audio inputs in the power point to make it interesting to the students.

    This week we had a wonderful discussion on teaching writing and assessing in large class. While teaching writing in large class ‘the entire class may not be’ in the process. What is the solution? As our moderator Jessie said, ‘Small groups’ is the only answer.  Techniques like Think-Pair-Share, Think-Pair-Square, Concepttest, Quick-thinks, and Concept Maps are really wonderful. All these techniques will promote cooperation and collaboration.

     I've created the first interative PowerPoint presentation in my life. I've already used PowerPoint presentations in my class but they've never had interactive tools.  It is for my trainee teachers. I would like to introduce them to blogging. After creating a blog they will be able to write about what they have done and what they learned in the teacher training programme. Creating a PowerPoint with interactive tools is tough work. But I like it.  I included hyperlinks and video files into my presentation. You can see it on our Wiki page.

  It is a great week. Only 20 days to complete the final project. Hard work and thinking ahead. I remember the lines of Sarojini Naidu, one of best Indian poets; “Rise brothers rise, the wakening skies pray to the morning light…”

P.K