We’ve lowered our prices, made a new tier for individual students

QUARANTINE SPECIAL
INTRODUCING STUDENT MEMBERSHIPS FOR $20
Slooh is a remote learning platform that teaches students to explore space via a network of online telescopes. In response to the global quarantine and shutdown of schools, Slooh.com is releasing a new Student Membership tier for just $20 per year, and as low as $10 per student per year when purchased in quantity by school groups. Slooh is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Key Features For Students 

• Students control a global network of robotic, online telescopes to collect and analyze data up to 18 hours per day.
• No astronomy background is required and students are guided in gamified, self-directed learning activities with access to astronomy educators on the platform.
• Students earn Badges and Gravity Points for completing Quests which challenge them to hunt down phenomena in space and follow in the footsteps of famous discoverers.
• Students can "Ask An Astronomer Anything" and tune-in to Slooh Astronomers performing 20 hours of live shows and lectures every month.

JUST $20 PER INDIVIDUAL STUDENT PER YEAR! Learn more about our memberships for individuals and groups.

https://slooh.com/about/about-slooh-education

Anger Mangement:Teaching /Training to students and adult

Mark Twain once said, ‘Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything which it is poured’.

According to APA, Anger is an emotion characterised by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong. Like other emotions positive and negative anger also is an integral part of every life.

We need to understand the causes behind aggression.

Why will we get angry with a person or a situation? The answer is simple; when the person or situation is not according to our expectations. Let's deal with both things separately.

First lets deal with the person. We get annoyed with the people we are dealing with everywhere - home, workplace, friends and family. 

We must introspect and think whether our expectations from that particular person are reasonable and justified. If we are right then we must try to train that person according to us and if not then we must take the onus of not expecting the right thing from the right person. The other reason might include that of back-stabbing or we are being cheated.

We must maintain the distance, not deal with the person and in case he is your work associate you may replace him, take responsibilities back from him or create situations that he leaves on his own.

Don’t react in anger at that time. Wait for the right time and opportunity.Let us look at some key points to control our anger.

Keep a record of what all triggers your anger and on basis of that develop the strategies

On feeling angry; start deep breathing, count till 10, start thinking about your favourite hobby, play your favourite music, meditate for 5 minutes or go for a walk.

Anger may lead to destruction if not controlled in time. The bombings at France and Lebanon in 2015 are classic examples of the built-in anger and aggression for a long period of time. I wish as educators we are able to instil peace and harmony in our students so that we don’t witness the attacks and outbursts of aggression. Respecting each other and being tolerant is not only needed in our country but across the world.

Dr Vasudha Neel Mani

Vice-Chairperson Learning Forward India

Principal Rockwoods International School Udaipur

My First Podcast - Sandeep Dutt

https://anchor.fm/sandeepdutt

This is my maiden attempt, did fumble, not the best of pronunciation, and maybe even the content may not be as good as I would have wanted it to be. Forgive me, making my best effort to take Learning Forward.

The Learning Forward India Foundation focuses on building professional learning communities. Our programs leverage the best in adult learning, research on organisational change, and practical experience to create capacity for sustained improvements in educators. Each person in your school contributes to the culture of your school. School culture is built on the actions and interactions of the people. You make your school stronger by adding value to others and making others feel valued. We are your partners for school transformation with an emphasis on culture as a service. #HappyTeachers

URL https://anchor.fm/sandeepdutt/episodes/HappyTeachers-ec6b67/a-a1qiqru

साहस- राजेश्वरी राठौड़

किसी भी काम को करने के लिए साहस होना चाहिए। यदि आपके अंदर हिम्मत नही होगी तो आप कुछ नही कर पायेंगे। हर चीज के लिए आपको हिम्मत चाहिए। चाहे वह छोटा कार्य ही कयों नाहो। जो आदमी यह महसूस  करता है किसी महान निश्चय के समय वह साहस से काम नहीं ले सका ;जिंदगी की चुनौतियों को कबूल नहीं कर सका; वह सुखी नहीं हो सकता है। बड़े मौके पर साहस नहीं दिखाने पर आप अपना वह लक्ष्य प्राप्त करने में विफल रहते हैं। विश्व के 95% व्यक्ति अपने लक्ष्य को या कार्य को प्रारंभ इसलिए नहीं कर पाते हैं कयोंकि वे इस बात से  डर जाते हैं की वह कहीं कोई गलती कर बैठेंगे या  असफल  हो जाएंगे । 

केवल 5% व्यक्ति ही अपने लक्ष्य प्राप्ति हेतु जोखिम लेने की हिम्मत जुटा पाते हैं ।अंतत अपने लक्ष्य को प्राप्त कर उन 5% महान व्यक्तियों की श्रेणी में सम्मिलित हो जाते हैं ,जिन्हें  यह विश्व महापुरुष के रूप में जानते  हैं । वर्तमान में विश्व में कई चुनोतियाँ  मुंह फैलाये खड़ी हैं ;जिनसे वे ही जीत पाएंगे जो इनका मुकाबला करने की हिम्मत दिखा पायेंगे । विद्यार्थियों को भी हर चुनौती का सामना करने का साहस रखना चाहिए । तभी वह अपने लक्ष्य को प्राप्त कर पाएंगे।

राजेश्वरी राठौड़

The Fabindia School

Be Focused - Manish Jaiswal

Today, I wish to share my views on what should we do to be focused during our study in order to attain success.

1. Discover inside you what you want to become.

2. Break the aim /target down into parts.

3. When you finish your daily target, reward yourself by giving time for your favourite sport or your hobby.

4. Make a study routine and paste it in your study place.

5. Be clear about why you want to get good marks.

6. Use a mind map to organize the information in every subject like flow chart or tree diagrams etc.

7. Make a “boring” subject is interesting by watching its short videos or doing its objective questions & checking the score.

8.We cannot learn or memorize everything so try to understand the topics.

9. Never hesitate to ask your doubts with your teacher.

10. Study in short breaks not to lose interest in the subject.

11. Organize your time as per the priority of topics.

12.Schedule weekly relaxations like Sunday etc

13. Give time to do exercise/cycling/ outdoor jogging as good health helps in sound study.

14. Focus on the process, not the result.

15. Get rid of distractions like mobile, TV, outing with friends, etc by deciding a fixed time of about 1-2 hrs.

16. Stick to some values of a good student like honesty (sincere hard work), perseverance(hard work with patience), self-commitment (work as determined), introspection(to look back to your work), self-confidence (belief on own work), awareness (attentiveness toward one's aim)

Dear students, always remember what our great Scientist & President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam said for students-:

“ If you fail, never give up because F.A.I.L. means "First Attempt In Learning"

- End is not the end, if fact E.N.D. means "Effort Never Dies"

- If you get No as an answer, remember N.O. means "Next Opportunity".

So Let's be positive. 

Manish Jaiswal/ Educator

The Fabindia School 

Happy Teachers - Rajinder Pal Devgan

Been thinking of Happy teachers and what it means to me, how to motivate and inspire them. 

From personal experience, it can only happen if there is a Passion to love and care for the students and be totally committed to the welfare of the students. An educator cannot afford to be ambitious or mercenary. Ambition often interferes in one's progress as an educator and often hinders a selfless approach.

RP Devgan with Neelam Sharma
at The Iconic School Bhopal

An educator must realise the enormity, the seriousness of the job and its ability to make a difference to children's lives.

Once the educators realise this than being at peace with oneself brings the feeling of happiness and satisfaction of making a difference.

Educators must realise that the rewards and awards will follow once the most spontaneously begin to love and care for the students and carry on with their job.

Again from personal experience, I can say that once the children realise that the educator genuinely cares for them they respond with great enthusiasm and a feeling of trust.

Winning the trust of a child is of utmost importance in making a difference to their growing up and their learning.

In many ways, a happy educator changes the atmosphere of a classroom and learning becomes a joy for all. The educator becomes a happily accepted role model to all.

Here is where Happy Teachers in a School make a difference not only to children's lives but to their parents too. The parents in return have full trust in the School where the child feels happy and has a sense of belonging.

Happy teachers help in making the bond stronger between the parents and their children.

Rajinder Pal Devgan

Chairperson Learning Forward India
<rpdevgan@gmail.com>

Work from Home: New Learning - Ajay Vijayvargi

Due to the pandemic, the spread of COVID -19 virus, everyone was faced with a situation like never before. A complete lockdown in more than 22 states with the postponement of exams in schools, colleges etc gave new learning opportunities to educators which involves greater use of technology while implementing Social Distancing. 

At this time of Social Distancing to protect everyone from disease, we need to assign our students daily work and stay tuned with them to get the feedback, solve their difficulties, keep them away from rumours and update them with important information issued in the public interest by the government.

 If we look at the larger positive side of this the situation,  this has given us an opportunity to spend the much-awaited time with our closed ones and has also given an opportunity to try our hands at new learning opportunities, strategies using the technology and implement them in our teaching and learning styles effectively.

While social distancing requires staying aloof but the need of the hour is to stay connected with our family, relatives, workplace, colleagues, students and school leadership through alternate modes of communication(s) by simple calls, WhatsApp group chats, group calls, video recording of lessons prepared by yourself or by using any other apps – Youtube, Khan Academy, Zoom, Skype and many more.

Let’s pray for everyone’s well being while being connected and safe.

Let’s fight it together.

Ajay Vijayvargi

avi4fab@gmail.com

The Fabindia School, Bali

Need of an hour - update the curriculum of Mathematics and club it with the Logical Reasoning according to the Grade

There seems to be general agreement that the number of students who fail to get a genuine grasp of Mathematics is much greater than it should be, there seems to be confusion about the sources of the difficulty. Some blame the situation primarily on the inadequacy of the teachers and the educators; others blame it on the inadequacy of the mathematics curriculum.

Consequently, no one is in a good position to tell those who teach mathematics what to teach or how to teach it. Most teachers appear to conduct their classes without benefit of any theory whatever their instructions is unimaginatively tied to the textbooks and their chief concern is to “cover the ground” regardless of how the students may respond to the material presented.

An encouraging aspect of the general picture recently came into existence were various groups of Educators and Teachers have become actually aware of the plight of Mathematics education and hence are taking positive actions and are looking towards a remedy. NCERT (National Council of Education Research and Training) has successfully announced that the revision of the entire curriculum along with the books will be done by 2023. This is needed so as to achieve a better understanding of how children acquire mathematical concepts. 

In spite of a large number of books and material published on mathematical education, little is provided and is implemented by the students and the teachers. It is important to shed light on the ways in which mathematics actually can be taught along with keeping in mind the discrimination between the fact and fancy ways.

Many students who are apparently capable of doing well in Mathematics course fail to do so. However, there is a paucity of the experimental evidence on the cause of the student dropout and on the origins within the learner of unnecessary failures or incompetence in Mathematics. 

Teachers particularly in the elementary school, have comparatively little training in Mathematics and many of them know very little about the subject which makes it very difficult to know till what extent this deficiency is reflected in the competence of the student and hence slowly starts losing the interest. 

There is a very big question mark on the reason for the dropout, unnecessary failure and incompetence in Mathematics of the student. To deal with this, the elementary and the secondary school curriculum along with the pedagogy necessarily needs to be updated which will later help us in dealing with the dropout and failures. 

The subject matter to be taught should be decided according to the grade placement of the topics and the readiness of the learner. It should be mandatory and hence should be in-built in the new curricula to have experimental classes as well, where the teacher should teach their students how to connect Mathematics with the Real-life problems/applications. 

Mathematics whether on the elementary or the secondary level should be taught in a way that instead of dropping out, our country aims at having as many Mathematicians as possible as no field is complete without Mathematics.

The new course of study for teachers, new teaching methods and new curricula should be such so as to cover the entire syllabus of the competitive exams (Logical Reasoning) along with the syllabus of each grade.  If this could successfully be implemented and executed, the decrease in dropouts can be achieved. 

The main reason for the dropout in the elementary and the secondary level is lack of interest in Mathematics as it was never made interesting by the teachers and educators for their students. Every teacher is always caught up in completing the syllabus and evaluating the answer sheets and every student is always busy in practising the same not by the choice but due to the pressure of scoring marks.

To conclude I would like to say

If our new curriculum is designed so as to club the competitive syllabus (Olympiads like IMO, RMO, NTSE, KVPY) in the form of Logical Reasoning along with the syllabus, it would not at all be difficult for the students to crack any exam whether it would be at the school level or any high-level competitive exam as students always lack in the reasoning section and if we prepare our students for the same right from the elementary level- it won’t be difficult neither for the student to CRACK IT nor for the teacher to TEACH IT!

- Divyanshi Mehrotra <mehrotra.divyanshi@icloud.com>

Experience the Joy Of Learning from your home

Learning Forward India Professional Learning Program (PLP)

PLP1 The Joy Of Learning

We live in a society consumed by materialism and the desire for more. Does this mean our next generation of children will grow up being literate and numerate greedy consumers whose lives are judged by the size of their houses and the latest model BMW on the drive? Or can our society, along with the desire of educators, teach our children the values they need to take responsibility for living and learning? It's simple; the children are our future, it's our moral duty in schools to provide a Values-Based curriculum.

The future of education will be built on immutable values alone. 

Appreciation, Caring, Co-operation, Courage, Freedom, Friendship, Happiness, Honesty, Hope, Humility, Love, Patience, Peace, Quality, Respect, Responsibility, Simplicity, Thoughtfulness, Tolerance, Trust, Understanding & Unity.

The Joy Of Learning (JOL) explores twenty-two values that can be taught through schools. This program will inspire you by using examples of where the costs are already being used by children and adults in schools and share practical tools to stimulate discussion and philosophical debate. It will also help people to take stock of their values and how they wish to lead their life. On successful completion, the individuals receive a certificate of participation.

The Joy Of Learning (11 Sessions) The teachers collaborate and work in groups to explore the 22 values and discover how the values help in the personal and social development of an individual. The benefits come alive at their school and enhance learning at the classroom level.

JOL is an extensive and profound learning experience that immerses members in a model of inquiry and problem-based learning. Staff members work collaboratively to gain knowledge to solve significant student learning problems in their schools. We seek to understand individual members' needs and then assist them in meeting objectives through a collaborative learning environment and with the support of experienced coaches.

Outcome and Certification: The educators are recognised for their effort with a Certificate Of Appreciation for every level of the Progam, a Gold Badge is awarded on completion of the three levels.

The PLP offers a great challenge and rewards the educators for the extra effort. The Certificates are awarded at the Graduation Ceremony/Annual Day of the school.

Register for the April 2020 Cohort
Experience the Joy Of Learning at Rs. 1100.00 (Rupees Eleven Hundred) only, delivered exclusively as an eLearning Program using ZOOM (Video Conferencing) & Telegram Messenger.