Kovleen uses ICT for the following activities: • preparing digitised curriculum and lesson plans • preparation of timetables • generating results and report cards – these are then made available to parents online • taking student attendance • basic day-to-day teaching • setting up holiday homework • sending circulars to parents • evaluation of topics through Google forms.
Challenges Not all of this was easy to achieve even in a wellresourced school. The school needed to make a significant upgrade to their systems in order to install the Enterprise Resource Planning system, including their web server. Parents also needed to be encouraged to engage in the process through meetings and workshops. Tools that were brought in off the shelf had to be customised to suit the requirements and needs of the school. There was a lot of work integrating web links and online sites into the existing lesson plans and the project took considerable management to make it work. It was not just teachers and parents that needed support, the administrative team needed to be given extra help and training too.
Monica’s comment ‘The introduction of technology in the classroom has brought a plethora of positive impacts to educational instruction. The teacher has become more of a facilitator than just a dispenser of information. With the use of technology the students enjoy the topic taught, learn better, understand better and show better performance.’
Examples of digital resources used within the school: 1. Flipped teaching with the help of Smartclass Class Transformation System in sync with Extramarks, Mimio tools, Peoples Link and online collaboration with Khan Academy for maths, National Geographic for geography and Wordsworth for English. 2. Jaws software helps children with special needs by enabling them to access digital resources using audio-visual aids. 3. Teachers upload content through the cloudbased ecosystem and the Enterprise Resource Teaching and technology: case studies from India
© Monica Joshi
Google Apps for Education (GAFE) and other cloudbased technologies. The initiatives aim to make the teaching and learning process more efficient by also improving the flow of communication and information for all the people involved.
Planning system, which can be accessed by students and parents for tasks such as homework and schedules. Parents can monitor academic performance through graphical presentation and progress reports. 4. Digitised lesson plans and curriculum mapping templates are provided to support teachers’ planning and improve pedagogical practices. 5. Online collaboration with international schools to enhance global understanding and CISCO web links to learn foreign languages.
Kovleen’s view Kovleen Middha is a teacher of science at the school. She uses a range of different technologies to support the development of classroom learning. She says, ‘I use webpages, research projects, videos, Microsoft Office tools and Google tools to enhance teaching of a concept, thus demonstrating that technology can be used to complement other aspects of good teaching rather than replace them. I try to work towards a student-centric pedagogy where technology is used effectively to create optimal learning experiences ... With ICT, I am able to create my own material and thus have more control over the material used in the classroom.’
To find out more • http://www.extramarks.com/smart-learn-classroom • http://www.mimio.com/en-EM/Products/ MimioStudio-Software.aspx • https://www.khanacademy.org • https://www.wordsworthlearning.com • http://nationalgeographic.org/education/?ar_a=1 • https://www.google.com/edu/products/ productivity-tools
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