Unity and Caring - Kirti Bisht

If we talk about the past, we have come across many incidents where unity has changed the course of the history of certain countries and at the same time there have been incidents where lack of unity proved to be a blunder for others.

The American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Non-Co-operation Movement in India are the finest examples of unity; and history says it all that whenever people failed to unite in face of a foreign enemy, they have faced its consequences. For example, during the Turkish Invasion in India, the regional kingdoms did not unite which led to the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate. On the other hand, we also know that the Britishers were able to colonize the Indian territories due to the lack of unity among Indians.

With this context, the words of J.K. Rowling can be put in the best light that “We are only as strong as we are united and as weak as we are divided.”

So, if we are fighting for a common cause or if we have a common goal, we cannot achieve it without unity.

“Sometimes it takes only one act of kindness or caring to change a person’s life”        -        Jackie Chan

Caring is paying attention to others, protecting others or being considerate. There are many ways through which we can show others that we care but I think the most important of them is taking out time for others.

If we link the above two values, we’ll realize that both go hand in hand. If there is caring, there will be unity or if people are united that means they are being cared for.

In an organization if the workers feel that the management cares for them, they will work in unity for the development of that organization and if they feel just the opposite then the workers too won’t care about the progress of their organization. They will work just for the sake of their living.

So, one should take out time for others, understand their problems, show them that they are being cared for. It will lead to unity……

Kirti Bhist
The Doon Girls' School

A Revolution In Education - Kiran Bir Sethi & Sandeep Dutt

Listen to the podcast

Jim and Chris connected by way of an email from Jim who was intrigued by Chris' article in GettingSmart.com about "The Superhero Schools of Philadelphia."  After a few conversations, Chris asked Jim if he would like to join him in the second series of A...

In this 2nd series of our A Revolution in Education podcast, we capture, lift up, and share the journeys and stories of revolutionaries in education – those who are devoting their life's work to making a difference in the lives of others through education.

Also available here:  arevolutionineducation.buzzsprout.com

Apple Podcast:  podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-revolution-in-education

As much as our world changes – socially, economically, politically and technologically – for the most part, our schools remain the same.  Yes, there are some minor improvements.  And good ones too.  However, most of these are still employed within an antiquated system and practices that do very little to truly impact the greater well-being and future of our youth.  To judge schools (as we have done) solely on students’ performance on standardized ELA and math assessments has unwittingly pressed most schools and their systems made accountable to these results to “double-down” on this focus at the expense of the greater well-being of our youth.

 

But what do we mean by the greater well-being of our youth?  Rather than answer that by myself, you can hear this from the voices of the dozen-plus outstanding educators who contributed to this podcast.  And not only do they speak to the need for a transformation/revolution of our schools and school system for the greater good of our youth, but in the end the greater good of our communities and our humanity.

 

Touched upon throughout is the need to give ALL of our youth the opportunity to pursue the lives they wish to live.  Touched upon is not only the need to imagine the possibilities of learning and learning communities that can contribute to the well-being of our youth, our communities, and the world, but also the NEED to pursue these possibilities, and learn as we go.  Finally, the contributors speak eloquently about the power of relationships within and across communities to transform education toward a greater purpose and to engage everyone in that transformation.  We need to co-create so that we can co-learn which can then lead us all to a shared transformation of outcomes rather than the transactional factory system we seem to be stuck in that resembles the "I Love Lucy" chocolate conveyor belt (if you are old enough to have seen this clip).

 

We need gardens that both value and support the natural growth of our youth.  And we need gardens plentiful with the resources that allow each individual and the garden to thrive and be abundant and generative.

 

These educators give us some insight as to what it takes to grow such gardens – the result of a revolution through transformation.

Design of Online Assessment - Jitendra Suthar

In this pandemic situation, there has been a revolution in the education field where papers are

replaced by screens. Pens are replaced by keystrokes. Books are replaced by Videos and PDFS and Exams are replaced by online quiz tools.

CBSE these days is more concentrating on training teachers with being handy in designing online assessments and Teaching online. Tools recommended by CBSE are Google Classroom for Live classes and Google Forms for conducting exams.

Google Classroom - One of the best and most used tools to take online classes, gives subjective materials, shares assignments, keeps a record of online learning students, and preserves all the activities on Drive. Using this online tool we can run a virtual class where students can view ongoing activity in the classroom, they can post questions, they can answer to any question or query posted by the teacher, and they can submit their assignments.

Google Forms – This tool is used for conducting exams online. It consists of multiple-choice questions, Short answers, Paragraph Answers, and many more answering patterns. Online papers can be corrected in 2 ways. First is Manual correction where students appear through a link and teachers generate a spreadsheet of the responses. Other is auto-correction where teachers prepare an answer key and update it with the paper while preparing it.

This paper gets corrected automatically according to the answer key and students can view the score immediately after submitting the paper. Students, Parents, and Teachers are very eager to learn this new normal change.   

        

Trained by CBSE.

Thank you 

Jitendra Suthar 

The Fabindia School         

jsr@fabindiaschools.in