Eduprentice

TED- ED Allows Teachers Create MOOC like Flip Lectures using Youtube Videos

2013-01-14T11:03:00.001+01:00

Khanacademy is essentially a one man in the form of Sal Khan producing lecture videos and encouraging ‘flipping the classroom’. There has been controversy about Khanacademy essentially being an ‘online chalk and talk’ system although I’ve also defended the benefits of ‘flipping the classroom’. Now however, TED has come up with a brilliant open alternative to create free lecture videos with an ability to flip. I believe TED-ED’s ability to allow professors create customized MOOC like flip lectures using the freely available Youtube videos will unleash much needed creativity and critical thinking components into the education system. Given below are some of the powerful features on TED-ED-

Turning Youtube into an Educational Video Resource

YouTube holds a rich trove of videos that could be used in the classroom. However so far, it’s been challenging to transform these videos into a truly interactive part of a lesson. TED- Ed’s new platform hopes to solve this problem—by organizing educational videos and letting professors “flip” them to enhance their lectures.

Instructors don’t have to rely only on TED’s educational videos to make their lessons. A special tool can flip any video on YouTube, adding sections to a lesson page where professors can write free-form questions and create links to other resources.

Powerful New Features on TED- ED

The TED-Ed site is both a portal for finding education videos and a tool for flipping them.

Theme View- On one page, videos are organized by themes, such as the pursuit of happiness and inventions that shaped history.

Category View- Instructors who want to use videos that are directly related to the subjects they teach can visit another page, where videos are organized in more traditional categories such as the arts and health.

Pre-Made Flip Questions- TED’s videos are displayed on lesson pages that include multiple-choice quizzes, open-ended questions, and links to more information about the material.

Customise Flip Questions - Professors who don’t want to rely on the pre-made content can press a button to flip the videos and customize some of the questions.

Unique Video Link- With each flipped video, professors receive a unique Web link that they can use to distribute the lesson to students and track their answers.

Logan Smalley, TED-Ed’s director, says that instructors could flip viral videos of cats if they wanted to, he said. He said his group wanted to leave the possibilities of flipped videos up to the people building the lessons.

“We didn’t want to limit what people might want to use to teach,” he said. Designers have also provided a way for users to flag any published lesson that they feel is inappropriate.

The New Teaching manifesto project I’ve created aims to bring the benefits of the much wanted Multiple Intelligences and Bloom’s Taxonomy led creativity and critical thinking skils into the classroom.

I strongly believe that the TED-ED approach to learning has the potential to become an even bigger game changer than Khanacademy and could even challenge the dominance of the ‘Celebrity Professor’ led popularity of MOOC’s.

A ‘Flipped Classroom’ Without Computers or Internet Connection

Free Google Tools for Schools, Colleges and Universities

10 Future Trends Reshaping Education Technology

2013-01-14T11:01:00.003+01:00

One hundred experts from higher education, K-12, and museum education identified “metatrends” and a road map of the education-technology landscape that will influence education in the future at the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project.

The 10 most important trends listed in the announcement include global adoption of mobile devices, the rise of cloud computing, and transparency movements that call into question traditional notions of content ownership concerning digital materials.

1. The world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative.

As more and more companies move to the global marketplace, it is common for work teams to span continents and time zones. Not only are teams geographically diverse, they are also culturally diverse.

2. People expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want to.

Increasingly, people own more than one device, using a computer, smartphone, tablet, and ereader. People now expect a seamless experience across all their devices.

3. The Internet is becoming a global mobile network — and already is at its edges.

Mobithinking reports there are now more than 6 billion active cell phone accounts. 1.2 billion have mobile broadband as well, and 85% of new devices can access the mobile web.

4. The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based.

One hour of video footage is uploaded every second to YouTube; over 250 million photos are sent to Facebook every day.

5. Openness along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information — is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world.

As authoritative sources lose their importance, there is need for more curation and other forms of validation to generate meaning in information and media.

6. Legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society.

In an age where so much of our information, records, and digital content are in the cloud, and often clouds in other legal jurisdictions, the very concept of ownership is blurry.

7. Real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success.

Access to learning in any form is a challenge in too many parts of the world, and efficiency in learning systems and institutions is increasingly an expectation of governments — but the need for solutions that scale often trumps them both. Innovations in these areas are increasingly coming from unexpected parts of the world, including India, China, and central Africa. Read about my New Teaching Manifesto that tries to bring creativity and thinking skills into any classroom.

8. The Internet is constantly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while refining our notion of literacy.

Institutions must consider the unique value that each adds to a world in which information is everywhere. In such a world, sense-making and the ability to assess the credibility of information and media are paramount.

9. There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training.

Traditional authority is increasingly being challenged, not only politically and socially, but also in academia — and worldwide. As a result, credibility, validity, and control are all notions that are no longer givens when so much learning takes place outside school systems. Read about Khanacademy’s efforts with the flipped classroom and Edmodo, the social network designed specially for learning.

10. Business models across the education ecosystem are changing.

Libraries are deeply re-imagining their missions; colleges and universities are struggling to reduce costs across the board. The educational ecosystem is shifting, and nowhere more so than in the world of publishing, where efforts to re-imagine the book are having profound success, with implications that will touch every aspect of the learning enterprise.

Get A Certificate From Home Doing These Free Courses!

2013-01-14T06:36:00.001+01:00

These days it is practically possible to complete your education online for free. However, so far it was difficult to get a certificate after completion. Recently though, thanks to the high cost of tuitions and the economic crisis, a lot of startups have begun catering to this demand by offering free online courses from reputed Ivy Leagues like Harvard, MIT, Stanford etc with a certificate given after completion. Most offer even certificates free of cost.

Don’t believe me? Check out the links for yourself.

Let’s begin with the English language itself.

Here are – Not one but Two Free EFL, TEFL Certificate Courses you can pursue. I’m Serious!

Did you know you could prepare for your GRE, SAT, GMAT and even for the Indian IIT, GATE entrance exams for free? Yup. This post tells you how.

Interested in knowing about the History of the World Since 1300 from Princeton University. Or, want to practice your American English Speech from Carnegie Mellon.

Alternatively, you may be interested in a course in Computer Science from Harvard or want to find out how to Find Money to Start a Business from Wharton School of Business.

Find a complete list of handpicked courses listed topicwise here.

Not yet found your course yet. Use this list of online resources to guide you to the course of your choice.

Believe me, as long as you have an appetite for learning, you’ll find a course that suits your interest area.

Learn To Hack DIY Electronic Projects and Gadgets Safely Without Electrocuting!

2013-01-14T06:32:00.000+01:00

Before jumping in to do electronic projects or hacking into electronic gadgets it’s essential to learn the fundamentals of electronics and the basic safety instructions so that you do not electrocute yourself. Here are some basic instructional guides and videos to get you started.

E is for Electronics: Yes, this is a coloring book targeted at kids, but it teaches the basics of electronics, what different components do, and terminology in a way that's incredibly easy to understand. It's meant for kids, but adults can learn just as much from it.

Khan Academy's Electricity and Magnetism: Khan Academy's introduction to electricity and magnetism class is an excellent place to start learning the basics of how electricity works. You don't necessarily need to understand everything, but you do need to know the basics of how static electricity works, how currents work (so you don't electrocute yourself), and understand what circuits do.

Penguin Tutor's Safety Guide: The site's a little ancient, but Penguin Tutor gets to the core of what matters. Penguin Tutor goes through everything you need to do to keep yourself safe when working on electronics, including all the obvious things like isolating the power supply when you're working, using appropriate fuses, and first aid.

Soldering is Easy: You're likely going to do a lot of soldering in your projects, and knowing how to do it right will make your projects a lot easier. MIghtyOHM's "Soldering is Easy" comic book teaches you everything you need to get you started.

Learn anything for free with these amazing free online video resources

Take A Basic English TEFL Certificate Course for FREE from Udemy and ESL Insider

2013-01-14T06:30:00.002+01:00

TEFL courses usually cost a lot of money. However that’s not always the case especially with the ones listed here.

Given below are two TEFL certificate courses endorsed by Alex Case of the Tefltastic blog. Alex has written a lot about fake TEFL ripoff courses that charge exorbitant prices but issue worthless certificates. So coming from him, you can surely trust the courses –

Udemy’s Basic TEFL Certificate Course

ESL Insider TEFL Certificate Course

Learn Anything For Free With These Amazing Free Online Video Resources

Education Now Completely Paperless With Edmodo, The Classroom Facebook!

2013-01-14T06:28:00.000+01:00

Edmodo is a social network specialized for education, specifically student-teacher interaction with an option for parents to review the progress of their children at school. LinkedIn’s, the professional networking site’s founder Reid Hoffman sees a great future for a social network that enhances the school learning experience and has invested in the start up venture.

The new home screen puts a feed of your students' activity in the right hand column, puts links to all of your courses in the left hand column, and puts tabs to access and manage courses at the top of your center column. This is just like what I see when I log in to manage my Facebook page.

Edmodo's new insights tab lets you quickly see how your students are reacting to the content that you post for them. You can also use the insights tab to post feedback to your students.

Edmodo claims that schools can create a paperless classroom in 2013 with-

Edmodo Groups - Create, share, and manage class content. Students can submit homework, assignments, quizzes and more to you through Edmodo.

Edmodo Planner - Stay organized with a calendar and task list. When you create an assignment, quiz, or event, the due date automatically shows up on your students' planners.

Edmodo Progress - Manage grading, reporting, and student progress. Your students' grades are automatically entered when you grade quizzes and assignments.

Find out more about how Edmodo enhances the school learning experience from my earlier post.

How To Find Your Own FREE Online Courses?

How To Find Your Own FREE MOOC Online Classes

2013-01-06T09:47:00.002+01:00

If you're looking for more or more varied course material, here are some resources to help you find great, university-level online classes that you can take from the comfort of your desk, at any time of day.

edX is a collection of free courses from leading Universities like the University of California, Berkeley, MIT, and Harvard. There aren't many, but the ones offered are free, open to the public, and they rotate often.

Coursera has a broad selection of courses in-session or beginning shortly that you can take for academic credit (if you're enrolled) or just a certificate of completion that shows you've learned a new skill. Topics range from science and technology to social science and humanities, and they're all free. In addition to opening courses to the entire world, Coursera’s platform could allow professors to build a better face-to-face experience by “flipping” their classrooms. Under this model, interactive classroom instruction replaces the traditional lecture, which is presented in other formats for students to absorb outside of class. More on Flipped Classroom here.

Udacity offers a slimmer selection of courses, but the ones offered are not only often for-credit, but they're instructor led and geared towards specific goals, with skilled and talented instructors walking you through everything from building a startup to programming a robotic car.

Udemy te free online-learning marketplace made a splash with its announcement of the Faculty Project, which enlisted 13 professors from institutions like Northwestern University, Dartmouth College, and Duke University to teach a group of 13 courses on subjects like ancient Greek religion and business strategy. But Udemy offers more than just courses from high-profile professors, like music classes, programming tutorials, and poker lessons presented through a mix of video, audio, and other media. The Faculty Project courses and most of the others on the site are free, though a few charge rates from $5 to $250.

The Khan Academy offers free YouTube-based video classes in math, science, technology, the humanities, and test preparation and study skills. If you're looking to augment your education or just take a couple video classes in your spare time, it's a great place to start and has a lot of interesting topics to offer.

Academic Earth curates an amazing list of video seminars and classes from some of the world's smartest minds, innovators, and leaders on a variety of topics including science, mathematics, politics, public policy, art, history, and more.

TED talks are well known for being thought provoking, interesting, intelligent, and in many cases, inspiring and informative. We've featured TED talks at Lifehacker before, and if you're looking for seminars on the web worth watching, TED is worth perusing.

GoodSemester allows anyone—students, nonstudents, and professors alike—to create courses on any subject. Mr. Rappaport calls it “the quintessential how-to site” that features interactive lectures, as well as productivity tools that let students take notes and complete their assignments without needing other software. It features courses on subjects like Web development, accounting, and game design.

Education-Portal.com has a list of universities offering free and for-credit online classes to students and the public at large.

Open Culture's list of free online courses is broken down by subject matter and includes classes available on YouTube, iTunes U, and direct from the University or School's website.

The Open Courseware Consortium is a collection of colleges and universities that have all agreed to use a similar platform to offer seminars and full classes—complete with notes, memos, examinations, and other documentation free on the web. They also maintain a great list of member schools around the world, so you can visit universities anywhere in the world and take the online classes they make available.

The University of Reddit is a crowd-built set of classes and seminars by Reddit users who have expertise to share. Topics range from computer science and programming to paleontology, narrative poetry, and Latin. Individuals interested in teaching classes regularly post to the University of Reddit subthread to gauge interest in future couses and announce when new modules are available.

The Lifehacker Night School is our own set of tutorials and classes that help you out with deep and intricate subjects like becoming a better photographer, building your own computer, or getting to know your network, among others.

Selected MIT, Harvard, Google Free Online MOOC Course List

2013-01-06T09:46:00.000+01:00

Free English Language Certificate Courses

TEFL courses usually cost a lot of money. However that’s not always the case especially with the ones listed here. Given below are two TEFL certificate courses endorsed by Alex Case of the Tefltastic blog. Alex has written a lot about fake TEFL ripoff courses that charge exorbitant prices but issue worthless certificates. So coming from him, you can surely trust the courses –

Udemy’s Basic TEFL Certificate Course

ESL Insider TEFL Certificate Course

Cross Disciplinary Courses

Duke University - Think Again: How to Reason and Argue - Professors Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ram Neta - If your current understanding of arguing and discussion stem from commenting on the internet, you need this course. Sinnott-Armstrong and Neta will show you how to use critical thinking skills to form rational, reasoned arguments to support or refute positions based on information and data, not confirmation bias and "my team is better than your team" thinking. You'll learn how to spot an argument, how to analyze it, the criteria for a good argument versus a bad one, and perhaps just as importantly—how to mess up an argument and the criteria for a flawed argument. By the end of the course, you'll be able to speak about and discuss issues that are important to you in a rational and intelligent way, or so we hope.

Udacity - How to Build a Startup (EP245) - Steve Blank Building a startup requires more than just a few million dollars from an angel investor and a semi-brilliant idea, and Steve Blank, a seasoned Silicon Valley entrepenur who's seen both sides of the coin, can help you build a plan to get your idea off the ground. Blank walks through the process of building your idea, getting people engaged and involved with your ideas, turning those people into customers, and then using their feedback to both improve your product and market it to make your business stronger.

University of California, Irvine - Introduction to Project Management - This course won't help you become a PMP, but it will show you how to handle projects and massive initiatives from a high level, balancing competing priorities and needs, working with schedules, adjusting deadlines, and more. You'll learn the "triple constraint" or scope, time, and budget, and how to balance them, and come away with the class with not just an appreciation for the profession, but the tools to coordinate your own personal projects.

MIT - Technology in Transportation - Prof. Sanjay Sarma - From the steam engine to the combustion engine to the rocket, this course will show you how technology has shaped the way we move from place to place, and in turn, how the transportation industry has shaped technology and advancement. Topics including radar, GPS, GIS, aerodynamics, vehicle engineering, and more will be covered, and the materials are all available online.

Social Sciences, Classics, and Humanities

MIT - Foundations of World Culture I: World Civilizations and Texts - Dr. Ghenwa Hayek - This course will introduce you to some of the most brilliant text, literature, history, and old stories to ever exist, starting in ancient antiquity and bringing you up to the 17th century. Ancient civilizations you may never have heard of will come to light and you'll read some of their world-view defining literature, and other cultures you may have thought you were familiar with will surprise you. The course is complex, but if you take the time to go through it, it'll open your eyes to a world bigger than what's outside your front door.

Princeton University - History of the World Since 1300 - Jeremy Adelman - It's a lot of ground to cover, but the world has changed an incredible amount since 1300 AD, and this whirlwind course will take you through it, without just focusing on one continent and one people's history. You'll start with Chinggis Khan and the Mongol invasions, and then traverse the globe to Europe, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and the Americas to see how major culture, political, and societal shifts took place, many at the same time.

Carnegie Mellon University - American English Speech - The goal here isn't to learn english, and you won't boost your vocabulary, but you will learn to enunciate, you'll learn the impact of the words you choose and the way you say them, and you'll learn the nuances of American English speech. You'll become familiar with the symbols that represent the sounds we make, and overall improve your own speech—assuming you speak American English. If you don't, by the end of the course, you'll have a new appreciation for the complexities of the language and its dialects.

MIT -Music and Technology: Live Electronics Performance Practices - Professor Christopher Ariza - Fans of electronic music, unite! This course will walk you through the beginnings of electronic music and musical instruments, from early analog devices to more modern synthesizers, including how musicians choose to include technology in their live performances.

Yale University - Roman Architecture - Professor Diana E. E. Kleiner - The Roman Empire was responsible for some of the world's greatest marvels of architecture and building design, and many of those examples still stand today across a wide swath of what was once one of the largest empires on Earth. Even today's architects struggle to match the complexity and precision of those old buildings, and in this course you'll learn what made Roman architecture so special, so inspirational to modern designers, and see beautiful examples of how good design and building can last the ages, from places where Rome reigned and far beyond.

Science and Medicine

Duke University - Introduction to Astronomy - Professor Ronen Plesser - This course doesn't start for a while, but it's one of the best introductions to the machinations of the universe around us that you'll see. You'll definitely need to flex your mathematics muscles here - this is no all-observation course. You'll learn not just how celestial bodies move and operate, but also the equations and mathematics that explain how it all works.

Carnegie Mellon University - Anatomy & Physiology - Our bodies are probably some of the most glorious and complex tools we'll ever have the privilege of using, so why not take some time to learn how it works? This introductory course from CMU's Open Learning Initiative gives you the opportunity to learn how your body works, some of the complex systems at play and busily working even as you sit and read this, and concepts like homeostasis, the levels of organization from the cellular to the macro—including the way organs are built and interact, and more.

Yale University - EEB 122: Principles of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior - Professor Stephen C. Stearns - If topics like evolutionary biology confuse you, or if you're looking for a way to challenge your own confirmation bias by learning more about biology and natural selection, this course is a great way to start. You'll walk through topics of transmission genetics, natural selection, adaptive behavior, sex (the evolution of and sexual selection), the importance of biodiversity, and even the evolutionary rationale between selfishness and altruism in a social context.

MIT - Physics and the Chemistry of the Terrestrial Planets - Professors Benjamin Weiss and Leigh Royden - Although a touch dated, this course will walk you through the basics of the composition of the planets in our solar system, including rocky bodies like Earth and Mars all the way out to the massive gas giants like Jupiter and Neptune. The course pays attention to how each planet formed and got its chemical composition, and what probes headed for those planets can expect to find there.

Yale University - GG 140: The Atmosphere, the Ocean, and Environmental Change - Professor Ronald B. Smith - Climate change, El Nino, the ozone layer—all of these topics are fair game in this introductory course about the Earth's climate, its history, its changes over the millennia, and how it's changing today. You'll learn the importance of separating weather from climate in the course while still understanding how weather can be a symptom of climate events, you'll learn whether those cyclical climate changes you've heard about are really true, and you'll have the opportunity to challenge your own beliefs on environmental science and climate change with facts and data to back them up in an environment led by a geophysicist.

Caltech - Drugs and the Brain - Professor Henry A. Lester - Bring your neuroscience pants to this class: Lester covers the issue of drug use for therapy, prevention, treatment, and recreation, all in one packed class full of information that won't require that you have a specific background, but a mind familiar to science and scientific thinking will do well here. By the end of the course, you'll have a new appreciation for the complexities of the brain and how chemical interactions can change everything about our body chemistry.

Computer Science and Technology

Google's Free Power Search Training- I expect this to benefit me because, as a writer, I rely on the search engines to help me research.

Harvard University - Computer Science 50x - Professor David J. Malan - When budding computer scientists and programmers find themselves at Harvard University, CS50 is the class they wind up in. It's demanding, but completely doable, especially for someone willing to buckle in and put in some effort to learn some broadly applicable programming skills. Whether you want to get a job as a developer and want to get some real skills under your belt, or you need to brush up on your codewriting technique, this open course will do the job.

Video lectures and additional content are available at CS50.net and CS50.tv.

MIT - 6.00x: Introduction to Computer Science and Programming - Professors John Guttag, Chris Terman, and Eric Grimson - MIT's beginner computer science course will teach you the basics. You'll need to brush off your mathematics skills for this course, since the instructors won't pull punches on the algebra and basic math required to grasp computer science concepts, but aside from that, you can go in bright-eyed and take away applicable skills. Best of all, you can follow along at your own pace.

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology - Android Development (iTunes U) - Professor David Fisher - while not strictly an online class, the CSSE490 Podcast series from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology will help you learn how to build Android applications from start to finish. Last term we helped you build apps for the iPhone or iPad, and this term, take some time to learn to develop for the other side, with self-paced skill-based lessons that will help you build your first Android app quickly, with supporting documentation on the web. Not a fan of iTunes? You can grab the videos at Fisher's YouTube channel or visit the course's website.

Stanford University - Human-Computer Interaction - Professor Scott Klemmer - Form matters, sometimes as much as function. In this HCI course, you'll learn how to design and build interfaces and systems that people actually want to use - something that a lot of developers often overlook. Building incredible function is important—often paramount—but if your interface is so poor that your tool is unusable and difficult to operate, you've got a dud on your hands. This course will teach you the basics of visual design, help you learn to poll individuals for design ideas, build paper prototypes, do field work, and test your designs with others. The end goal is for you to learn what it takes to incorporate intelligent design into any technology.

University of California, Berkeley - CS169.1x: Software as a Service - Professors Armando Fox and David Patterson - If webapps are more your fancy and you're interested in building the next big, scalable platform that will draw users to you to make use of your big idea, then this Berkeley course is for you. You'll use Agile techniques to build scalable platforms using Ruby on Rails, from design and development to testing and rollout. You'll learn how cloud applications work, publish your own, and more. You'll need some programming experience for this one though, so make sure you're ready!

University of Washington - Information Security and Risk Management in Context - Professor Barbara Endicott-Popovsky - Privacy, security, and confidentiality are more than buzzwords describing "keeping secrets," and in this course you'll learn modern techniques used to secure networks, protect individual privacy, and how businesses and technology professionals alike are addressing modern security issues, even as more businesses get hacked and there's more momentum to put important data—like healthcare records and other sensitive information—on the internet.

Finance and Economics

SmallBizU/Kutztown University of Pennsylvania - Finding Money to Start a Business - If you have an idea that you want to get off the ground, but finding the cash to do so is the problem, this 3-hour course will help you figure out where you can raise money, how to go about doing it, and some other important things an entrepeneur should consider when looking for the cash to make his or her idea reality.

University of California, Irvine - Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning - You have your budget, but it's tenuous. You're not sure whether or not you should be paying down your debt or saving for the future or both or what. If you feel a little overwhelmed by your personal finance needs, this course will help you master not just the basics of financial planning, but cut through the fog of confusion and options to help you decide which approach is best for you and your life situation.

Investopedia - The Complete Guide to Retirement Planning for 20-Somethings | 30-Somethings | 40-Somethings | 50-Somethings - Denise Appleby - Wherever you are in life, it's not too late to start saving for retirement. The tactics, however, to best maximize your returns and live comfortably, vary depending on your age, so this series of courses is broken down into age groups with advice best suited to each. Choose your adventure, and get started planning for your future—whether it's with funds, stocks, bonds, or good old fashioned interest-bearing CDs and IRAs.

Investopedia - Budgeting Basics - Amy Fontinelle - Budgeting sounds easy, and it's something everyone should do, but if you're having a hard time making your budget work, or having a hard time sticking to your budget, it might be time to look at how you did it or start from scratch. This course from Investopedia may not be professor-driven, but it's a great set of instructions that you can follow along with in your spare time to help you get your expenditures under control and start saving money.

Yale University - ECON 252: Financial Markets - Professor Robert J. Shiller - If the way the stock market, commodities markets, and bonds both puzzle and interest you, this course will help demystify how global financial markets work, and give you some insight into what you can expect when economists on the news say things like "erratic" and "psychology driven." The course explains what risk is in a financial setting, how financial institutions manage risk, regulate themselves (or require outside regulation), how monetary policy set by agencies and governments affect the market, and more. The course is available via YouTube or iTunes U at the link above.

Mathematics

Stanford University - Introduction to Mathematical Thinking - Professor Keith Devlin - Mathematicians have a certain "way" about them, and this class you'll learn to approach problems with the same mindset. Break down the problems you're confronted with into manageable components, see how they interrelate, and approach them individually. This isn't about how you deal with math problems in school: the skills you'll learn in this six week course will be applicable far more broadly to problems you may never have encountered before.

La Trobe University - The Algebra of Everything (iTunes U) - Professor Marcel Jackson - If you've promptly forgotten all of the algebra you may have learned in school because it just "wasn't applicable," think twice. This course will brush off those skills and show you how there's algebra—and mathematics—everywhere around us, and show you how you can put those algebraic skills to good use.

Udacity - Intro to Statistics (ST101) - Professor Sebastian Thrun - We're assaulted with statistics on a daily basis, usually used to support or refute points of view or opinions—so much so that many people just ignore statistics entirely, but that's the last thing you should do. This course helps you learn to use statistics for decision-making, whether it's a matter of probability or whether it's looking at the flip side of a societal debate and using the statistics of the matter to see through to the truth. You don't need a math background for this course, but by the end of it you'll be familiar with terms like regression, correlation (and the correlation vs. causation question), standard deviation, and more.

Law

The Open University - Laying Down the Law (iTunes U) - Does prison actually work to reform criminals? Do individuals have the right to choose when and under what circumstances they die? This course tackles all of these topics and more, with guest lecturers sitting in for every session discussing a new topic, all centered on the core question: does the traditional rule of law as we understand it work to preserve the stability of society, or does it need to change?

Liberty University - Introduction to Forensics (iTunes U) - If you've ever wondered how investigators find DNA at crime scenes, test for and record fingerprints, or in general investigate a crime scene with the intent of finding whatever microscopic evidence a criminal may have left behind, this course offers real-world insight from experts. Trust us, it's better than watching CSI.

Related Posts

Learn To Negotiate Like A Pro With These Free Video Tutorials

Learn The Simple Tricks To Spam-Proof Your Emails

Teach coding to school kids effortlessly – Download FREE Raspberry Pi Manual

2013-01-06T09:44:00.002+01:00

Whether you have a new Raspberry Pi and are just figuring out what you can do with it or don't have your hands on one yet but want to get started learning more about programming and other computer science topics, the free Raspberry Pi Education Manual is a wonderful 172-page resource.

The PDF manual is a beginner's guide to Scratch (an awesome visual programming environment), Python, the Linux command line, and more. You'll find experiments for creating games and animations—and in the process learn not just how to code with the Raspberry Pi, but the basics of computer science as well. People of all ages can use the manual to learn more.

Links-

The Free Raspberry Pi Education PDF Manual

Raspberry Pi

The Best Learning and Education Resources are all Free!

2013-01-02T07:05:00.001+01:00

TED Talks

TED's mission statement begins:

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.

TED (conference) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

TED addresses a wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture. The speakers are given a maximum of 18 minutes to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can. Past presenters include Bill Clinton, Jane Goodall, Malcolm Gladwell, Al Gore, Richard Dawkins, Bill Gates, educator Salman Khan, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and many Nobel Prize winners.

Since June 2006, TED Talks have been made available online on the websites of TED, YouTube, and iTunes and since late 2009, there have been free apps for iOS (iPhone, iPad), Android, webOS and Windows Phone 7.

You can start with the Most Popular TED talks

Harvard Business Review – offers the following for free

Internet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

HBR blog
3 free articles per month from Harvard Business Review on signing up for free. You’ll get a monthly email as soon as the next issue is published and you will be able to read any three articles of your choice.
Monthly email newsletters on innovation, best practices, technology etc.
Daily Management tip - for every management ad you’ll have to put up with two email ads.

Khanacademy

Bug Report screenshot for Khan Academy (Photo credit: syvwlch)

With a library of over 3,000 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 315 practice exercises, Khanacademy is on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace. Major topics covered are-

Math
Brain Teasers
Science
Healthcare and Medicine
Physics
Humanities & Other History

Test Prep

Khanacademy is also available as an IPad app.

Teacher and administrators can explore Teacher Resources

MIT Open CourseWare - is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, partly free and openly available to anyone, anywhere. As of November 2011, over 2080 courses were available online. While a few of these are limited to chronological reading lists and discussion topics, a majority provided homework problems and exams (often with solutions) and lecture notes. Some courses also include interactive web demonstrations in Java, complete textbooks written by MIT professors, and streaming video lectures.

logo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

OCW video and audio files are provided in full for offline downloads on iTunesU and the Internet Archive.

OCW introduced an iPhone App called LectureHall

Check out the RSS feed of new courses

Other Valuable Sources

List of free educational video websites

TED- Ed - TED-Ed's mission is to capture and amplify the voices of great educators around the world. They do this by pairing extraordinary educators with talented animators to produce a new library of curiosity-igniting videos.

Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Project Gutenberg- has the largest collection of out of print and out of copyright books. It is now available for download an epub which is an mp3 like standard for reading books on any digital device like a tablet or smartphone.

Get started by checking out the most popular books and download them from here

Virtual Labs – is a project initiated by the Government of India with the objective of using the Internet to make up for the inadequate laboratory infrastructure in colleges in the State, with particular focus on rural colleges. 91 lab experiments, covering nine broad areas, have been developed by 12 institutes from across the country. Apart from seven Indian Institutes of Technology (Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Roorkee and Guwahati), International Institute for Information Technology-Hyderabad, Amrita University, Dayalbagh University, National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK), and College of Engineering, Pune, developed the experiments that were subsequently uploaded.

Check it out on www.vlab.co.in

Last but definitely one of the best- Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia contains more than 20 million articles in 282 languages. The parent company, Wikimedia Foundation also runs the following free initiatives:

Image via CrunchBase

Wikibooks contains a collection of free educational textbooks and learning materials.

Wikimedia Commons contains a free to use repository of images, sounds, videos and general media, containing over 12 million files.

Wikiversity contains several educational and research materials and activities

Wikimedia India is the Indian edition of Wikimedia.

Khanacademy and Flipped Classroom- Analysis of Benefits and Shortcomings

2012-12-30T10:07:00.003+01:00

Sal Khan at Web 2.0 Summit (Photo credit: Kevin Krejci)

There’s a lot of confusion and controversy surrounding the use and implementation of the Khanacademy and the Flipped Classroom model. This post is an humble attempt to put to rest from a neutral and objective standpoint by talking about the pros and cons.

Before we go ahead, a little bit of history. Sal Khan originally started out helping out his cousins with their Math problems by making Youtube videos. Over the years the collection has grown to over 3300 videos. This is the original Khanacademy. As far as teaching is concerned, this isn’t the best part. Because, there has been a lot of criticism regarding Khan’s use of ‘chalk and talk ’ to explain and demonstrate.

What Sal Khan made possible after creating the videos is the real paradigm shift. Khan has essentially created an entire learning ecosystem by doing the following things-

Creating interactive practice exercises for every video using badges for motivation

An analytics dashboard for teachers to track the real time progress of their students’ practice.

Before getting into the issues surrounding Flipped Classroom lets understand what the Khanacademy learning ecosystem can do on its own-

Image via CrunchBase

It has over 3300 videos based on Math and Science concepts neatly arranged and can cater to a beginner to the most advanced student.

It allows the student to understand concepts through video and the ability to rewind and understand exactly the portions they haven’t mastered yet.

Once the students understand the Math concepts, Khanacademy encourages the student to try it out using practice exercises.

Teacher can selectively identify the weak student and either a good student to help or can intervene themselves- all thanks to a real-time analytics dashboard provided everybody in the class is logged in through an internet connection.

Flipping The Class

Khanacademy also encourages teachers to ‘Flip the Classroom’ i.e allow students to watch lecture videos at home and then do the actual practice in the class. If all students actually do so, learning will truly become a 24/7 activity and can be taken outside the classroom without the help of parents, individual tutoring, group study etc. This is where I believe Khanacademy’s badges system and gamification model helps because it encourages students to prove to their peers and the teacher how good they are by getting an official endorsement from Sal Khan himself!

Bug Report screenshot for Khan Academy (Photo credit: syvwlch)

There is a criticism that Khanacademy encourages gamification of learning i.e. it encourages students to go after badges without really getting to know the concepts first. If teachers have such apprehensions, they can cross-check the ‘virtual student progress’ with a real paper and pencil test and Math problems designed by themselves and then check if there’s a discrepancy between the student’s real and ‘virtual’ progress. If we believe the main goal of education is to make students into independent learners through a process of self-discovery, Khanacademy is truly a blessing as it’s also free of cost.

In fact Sal Khan plans to add an additional layer of online forum like interactivity to Khanacademy by making it possible for other students or teachers or experts to interact, tutor and solve difficult problems. For example, if I’m a teacher and find out that some student is stuck with a trigonometry problem which I think is pretty easy, I could contact the students via skype or Google Hangout or simply type the solution to their query. Again, Sal Khan could decide on a badge system for expert contributers, essentially creating an 24.7 free, open source ecosystem of learning similar to the wikipedia model.

Solving The Access Problem

School children in Tamil Nadu (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There’s no real relationship between Khanacademy and the Flipped Classroom. Khanacademy is primarily an educational video lecture resource. It is also a web-based analytics tool to implement the ‘Flipped Classroom’ allowing teachers to track student progress and most importantly for students to practice their learning and understanding of the lesson over and over until they have mastered it.

What if you do not have a fully-equipped wifi enabled classroom, you will not be able to use the Khanacademy resources or use the ‘Flipped Classroom’ concept? In other words, both the video lectures and the ‘flipped classroom’ can be adapted to any situation or scenario. I’ve explained details of how to flip a class without the internet using just mobile phones.

What Khanacademy is not and cannot do?

Khanacademy is not a replacement for teachers or classroom learning. Infact Khanacademy encourages active involvement of teachers.

The Khanacademy model of Flipped Classroom frees up time for teachers who can encourage higher level cognitive tasks as recommended by Bloom’s Taxonomy, say a student project for example. However, if the teacher does not have the ability, the expertise the or passion to engage students in higher level cognitive tasks and challenges, the ‘Flipped Classroom’ will merely be limited for classroom practice.

Khanacademy is not the only way to teach. There are several alternatives to Khanacademy’s ‘chalk and talk’ educational videos on Youtube which you could encourage your students to watch. Or you could create your own video and ask your students to watch.

‘Flipped Classroom’ is a technique for freeing up precious classroom time. You do not have to use Khanacademy to get the benefit of it. For example, if your school does not have internet in the classroom you will not be able to track student progress. You could still ask students to watch the relevant video at home and use the textbook problems for classroom practice .

To sum up, Khanacademy is a great way of enhancing the teaching-learning experience. It’s an excellent tool for home schoolers. It can even help passionate teachers do more complex learning. But it is not a replacement for the teachers. Although Khanacademy does a lot to free up classroom time, it cannot guarantee that teachers have the ability to do so unless they are passionate, have the expertise and want to take up the initiative.

A ‘Flipped Classroom’ Without Computers or Internet Connection

2012-12-30T10:04:00.000+01:00

KHANACADEMY (Photo credit: Colegio Altamira)

Is it possible to ‘flip the classroom’ without computers or internet access? Yes it is. I’m trying out a method simply using mobile phones in the classroom.

The basic concept of the ‘flipped classroom’ is very simple. The students watch a pre-recorded video lecture/demonstration at home before the actual class begins. This way the teacher can pay more attention to student progress. The classroom time is now freed up for discussions, activities, practice work, doing the homework and projects. The flipped classroom also allows students to learn at their own pace because they can repeatedly watch the lectures. The teacher can also give more help to weak students while the good ones are busy solving more advanced problems

If the teacher is excited by the ‘Flipped Classroom’ model but is constrained by a lack of computer or internet access at school, it is still possible to use the Khanacademy resources and flip the classroom in an innovative way. All you need to do is download the Khan academy videos and watch it on a mobile phone. To do this you will have to

1. Convert the video into the 3gp (for Nokia) or Mp4 (all other handsets) video format and then share the video with the students using a Bluetooth connection.

2. Record your own lecture/demonstration and share it with students using Bluetooth

3. Download lectures and demonstrations from alternative sites like Youtube, TED-ED, BBC etc., convert them into a mobile phone format and share using a Bluetooth connection.

4. You could also give away the selected video lessons in the form of a CD/DVD so that the students can watch them at home using a DVD player.

Things required:

[023/365] - Flip Filming (Photo credit: SimonDoggett)

· Colour Mobile handset with a camera, bluetooth and a memory card i.e. SD Card

· A computer for the teacher to convert videos. You could also convert videos to any format on the internet.

· A free conversion software called Xmedia Recode

There’s one more innovative idea I’d like to share. Since a colour mobile phone is such a valuable learning tool, school authorities, educational NGO’s and other interested parties can consider giving away a handset using the microfinance facility for poor, rural students.

Although this post aims to address the technology constraint related to accessing educational videos, it does not solve the problem of the language barrier. Therefore Khanacademy or other Youtube educational videos are not suitable for students unless the lecture/demonstration is narrated in the local language. However, science experiments and math problems can be demonstrated through visuals and board work respectively.

Anybody who needs further help related to converting the software or any other technical information can write to me via email.

Although tablets would be ideal for watching videos their price and availability is an issue right now. The mobile phone offers the perfect solution to implement the flipped classroom on an immediate basis.

Free Online Tuition and IIT-JEE, SAT, GMAT tutoring at Khanacademy

How to improve teaching quality in Indian private schools?

Edmodo - A Facebook for the Classroom!

2012-03-20T09:36:00.000+02:00

Edmodo is free to use and boasts the following cool features:

Easier for students to engage, collaborate, exchange ideas and share content in a secure, closed environment with fellow students and their teachers.

Enables differentiated instruction/supervision either for one-to-one or for the whole group.

Provide easy access to projects, classwork and school events through assignments, quiz builder, calendar and gradebook features.

Edmodo (Photo credit: jrhode)

Built-in analytics tools to measure school and classroom engagement and adoption.

Allow students to access the content they need immediately via their Edmodo 'Backpack'. Also allows you to Create and manage your personal content library, including the best content you've discovered, shared and received.

Edmodo also enables advanced best-practice sharing by:

Instantly connecting teachers to a global network of educators using Edmodo Communities

Schools and districts can access additional functionality by registering for a unique subdomain at www.edmodo.com/institutions

Facilitates communication within and between schools and districts.

Mobile learning environment with smartphone apps and a mobile site.

Helps parents, teachers and students track and measure academic success.

This video explains how to set up a training group and invite all teachers from your school or district.

Related Posts:

How can parents prevent bullying and violent behaviour?

2012-03-05T13:42:00.002+02:00

When I asked a shopkeeper ‘Why do you sell cigarettes so close to the school? ‘ he replied casually, ‘I’m doing it because I see others doing it.’ This is something we have heard quite often. He went on to say- ‘If I’m not selling cigarettes to children, someone else will do. So it doesn’t make a difference really.’ Really?

Child Hiding (Photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography)

Then I asked him another question, ‘What if some other shopkeeper is selling cigarettes to your school-going children? Would that be OK too?’ Now he was caught and tried to hide it with a sheepish smile!

The problem here goes far beyond a clash of business and ethics. It comes from an utter lack of feeling for the community. We fail to see that someone else’s child is just like ours. Such a myopic, self-centered way of life is having a terrible impact on children not just poor but even the rich.

In many countries, it is natural for a child to be educated in a good school while a poor child works as a servant in their house. The ‘privileged children’ quickly learn from their parents how to behave with the servant. Initially, it is possible that they will ask their parents why the servant child doesn’t go to school. If the parent’s response is to dismiss the child’s queries and to tell them to stay away from such issues, the child begins to shape his/her worldview accordingly. They begin to associate less and less with the servant kid and even mistreat them in the parent’s absence. Instead, if the child is taught to the treat the servant child with respect and disciplined whenever the latter is made fun of, the privileged child learns to see things differently. See my post on how to deal with rude and angry behaviour.

Parents are also the best gauge of their children’s emotions. If children are not discouraged from wrongful behaviour under the assumption that ‘my child can do no wrong’ the parent should also be prepared for their child growing up to be a potential threat to the society. ‘My child can do no wrong’ is too simplistic an assumption (read my post on Sibling Rivalry).

As I have mentioned earlier, children are influenced in several ways and are vulnerable to manipulation. Although children know how to use the internet, they may be ill-equipped to deal with a cyber bully or a paedophile not to mention violent video games.

Children do not understand that smoking a cigarette is addictive, dangerous to health and cannot be easily got rid off. They do it because it is fun and cool. If the parent is also a smoker, an alcoholic or a drug addict and openly indulges in front of their children and then tries to ‘educate’ the child about the consequences of addiction, can they honesly expect the child to heed the advice? The child expects a role model out of their parents. If they fall short, the child is better off at a boarding school or under foster care!

They are our future!

Of course the school also has a role to play. They have a duty to supervise how children behave within the school premises. If there are less number of students in a class and at least one dedicated teacher to supervise a batch of students say for about four to five years, a lot of problems can be avoided. Such a teacher is able to establish a personal relationship with the students and the teacher can also easily identify changes in the child’s behaviour and remedy them proactively.

Psychological counselling is very important for the students and there should be no stigma attached to it. Counselling will be rendered useless if they are over-burdened as it is a very time intensive activity and can involve complex situations. Schools need to make special provisions if the counselling demands are higher than usual. I have written about the how much the school principal alone can do if he really wants to set things right!

It is not easy to bring up children as responsible citizens, especially so if we fail to play our role properly. The alternative though is pretty sobering indeed. We do not want school kids to stab their teachers or shoot down fellow students with a gun. Now, do we?

Related Articles

Free Google Tools for Schools, Colleges and Universities

2012-03-05T12:14:00.000+02:00

Here is my question to school principals, trustees, college professors and Vice-Chancellors-

Have you checked out free alternatives before investing/upgrading your IT infrastructure and Educational technology requirements?

Did you know that with just a good internet connection you could get all the education technology, management software and even content for free?

Google Apps Education Edition grows from the belief that any academic institution from a local school to a global university – becomes a more effective learning community when communication and collaboration are easily available and used by all. Google Apps for Education is cloud-based resource, free for all educational institutions. Here are some of the benefits-

Web-enabled software. No worries regarding virus or antivirus
Set-up an internal video portal just for your school
Deliver and collect surveys, quizzes, and feedback
Collaborate with others, online, on documents, presentations, and spreadsheets
Organize your school email more effectively
Develop a media-rich website
Create shared calendars for your school
Customized Google Apps for your school
Cost- Totally Free

Google Apps

The only requirement to access Google Apps for Education for free is that your school/college/institute needs to have an official website.

Getting started/Getting Involved

If you are a parent you can suggest the service to the school by explaining the benefits at the Parent Teacher’s meeting or with a presentation to the school board or principal.
You can raise funds and gather volunteers like IT experts and teacher trainers through your alumni association to implement Google Apps for Education in your school. Or you could contact me.
If you are a teacher, use some of the features and lesson plans, test it out and suggest the benefits to the school board.
Get details of webinars or seminars on the web for various topics here.
India Contact: atul.gupta@mediaagility.com

The Google Guarantee

With Google Apps for Education, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs, and Google Sites are guaranteed to be available at least 99.9% of the time, ensuring that users have access when they need it.

Additional links about Google Apps for Education to kick-start the implementation-

Complete training and resources related to Google Apps for Education
.Check out how Google Apps are being integrated into lesson plans
Check the Google App product video demonstration.
Frequently Asked Questions
Read how Google Apps benefitted a teacher here.
Ten Reasons to Choose Google Apps for Education
Go to the Signup page

Related Articles:

Free Online Tuition and IIT-JEE, SAT, GMAT tutoring at Khanacademy

2012-03-05T11:49:00.000+02:00

I’m not kidding!! Most of us like to crib about the quality of education. Salman Khan (no, not the one who likes to take his shirt off unfortunately J), actually decided to do something about it! And how!!! He quit his high paying hedge fund analyst job to start Khanacademy.org which features more than 2,600 videos on high school math, science, history etc. Not only this. It also has videos for students preparing for the hallowed IIT-JEE, SAT and GMAT. It’s a not-for-profit organisation with funding from the Gates Foundation and now Google. It has set itself the rather modest goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone, anywhere (and anytime, I should add).

Khanacademy covers a range of areas like K-12 math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even reaches into the humanities with playlists on finance and history. Each video is a digestible chunk, approximately 10 minutes long, and especially purposed for viewing on the computer.

Khanacademy materials and resources are available completely free of charge.

How it works for students

Students can make use of the extensive video library, practice exercises, and assessments from any computer with access to the web.

Image via Wikipedia

Complete custom self-paced learning tool

Coaches, parents, and teachers

Coaches, parents, and teachers have unprecedented visibility into what their students are learning and doing on the Khan Academy.

Ability to see any student in detail

A real-time class report for all students

Better intelligence for doing targeted interventions

Khan also plans to extend his "free school" to cover topics such as English and history. Programs are being undertaken to use Khan's videos to teach those in isolated areas of Africa and Asia. Salman Khan delineates his motives thus:

‘With so little effort on my own part, I can empower an unlimited amount of people for all time. I can't imagine a better use of my time.’

Related Articles

School Principal: A Management Professional on Steroids!

2012-03-05T11:38:00.000+02:00

In many ways, the role of a school principal is unique and challenging. They are literally responsible for the future of hundreds of their students while also managing the twin roles of a Chairman and CEO! As you may know, a chairman of a company is responsible to his shareholders and sets out the long term vision of a company. The CEO on the other hand is responsible for the day-to-day functioning of the company and has to look into the best interests of not only his clients but also his employees and other stake holders like the local community. This in many ways summarises the cornucopia of roles the school principal needs to accomplish.

Let’s examine some of their main roles from a managerial perspective:

Chief Liaising Officer and Trouble-shooter

At any point of time a school principal is busy liaising with the following groups, interests or responsibilities-

Students
Teachers
Recruitment
Parents
Management, Board or Trustees
PTA (Parent-Teacher Association)
Organising School Events (Event Management) & Study Tours
Non-Teaching Staff and/or Support Staff
Press publicity and Public Relations
Vendors - for upgrading school infrastructure, supplying stationery, technology etc

Essentially the buck stops with the principal on all these matters. All unresolved grievances and issues related to all the interested parties stated above are expected to be dealt with firmly yet wisely by the school principal. Their decisive role in these matters shapes the future direction of the school!

In-house Teacher Trainer

I believe that the school principal is the ultimate teaching resource for that school. Not just as a subject matter expert their own academic discipline but as an all purpose philosophical guide and coach for all the teachers of that school. It’s better to agree on a set of broad guidelines and allow the teachers to figure out the best techniques. For e.g. it could be as simple yet profound as- ‘Playing the role of a facilitator instead of an instructor/lecturer helps nurture independent learners’. Instead of the students depending on the teacher for every answer, the teacher could be motivated to inspire and guide the students to find answers on their own or try to solve their own problems and issues. This not only would increase the student’s self- esteem but give them the confidence to face the future better, thereby creating better citizens and bringing laurels and recognition to their alma mater.

However, the school principal needs to be careful not to impose the training techniques on the teacher. Else, they would be in the danger of being branded authoritarian. Lack of freedom to experiment, too much micromanagement and the inability to delegate responsibility can backfire badly depending on how serious the situation is and could lead to unintended outcomes like teachers quitting schools midway. This is a serious problem in many private schools in India today. In such a case, it would be better if the managements or trustees hire experienced teacher trainers from outside.

Chief Visionary Architect

Image via Wikipedia

School heads are responsible for outlining the long-term goals of the school. Not only are they supposed to incorporate international best practices academically and in the running of the school but in addition are required to create a unique brand identity for the school. This helps the school to carve a niche for itself and creates an USP which bodes well for future student admissions. Having a unique brand positioning based on progressive values, academic rigour and a focus on developing the extracurricular abilities of the students always helps when every school more or less follows the same school system (like the SSC, ICSE, CBSE or IB)

Transforming ordinary students not just into independent learners but helping them fulfil their aspirations can be a vision that can be set out by a good principal. This means, if the students want to pursue an undergraduate course at an Ivy League institution, the school should have the ability to train them for their SAT. Similarly, if he or she wants to pursue law or engineering or be a sportsman or a graphic designer or an actor, the school should be in a position to at least support these aspirations. This is what separates a good school from the others and I know it’s not very easy to replicate this in every school. But then, how many school principals and managements even share this vision for their school as they would for their own children? I feel, once the bar is set high enough, things will begin to fall in place. Whoever thought a 100% results in the final exams or topping at the state or national level was the only aim. Unfortunately that is precisely the case in most schools!

Chief Research Head

This is where the research part comes in. Since the school principals generally have the maximum amount of exposure and experience in the teaching-learning process, they are in the best position to read up, understand and implement best practices in teaching and learning styles, suggest changes and modify existing ones so that the teachers and the students are in sync with the school’s broader vision.

Motivational Guru

Instead of looking at a student from just an academic perspective the school principal could encourage teachers to look at him or her performance from a multiple intelligences perspective. And suddenly, the same academically weak student will seem like a very gifted student! Once the school principals realise that in the long run academic performance is not the only measure of success, they can encourage students to pursue their special talents. Once academically weak students realise that they aren’t good for nothing, that there’s something about them to be proud of, we can in most cases expect at least an average academic performance from these students simply on the basis of their new found motivation!

Although these days, many managements and trustees recognise that a good school principal needs to be compensated well in order to perform their myriad roles, they also put undue pressure on the principals to attract more students in order to increase profits. There is added pressure on private school principals to pay less and extract more work from the teachers. As a result quite often school principals fall prey to ‘cost-cutting for personal gain’ practice and try prove their efficiency to their bosses instead of acting in the students’ or the teachers’ best interest. This attitude ought to change if the school principal has to fulfil the expectations discussed above. Teachers are not like machines that can be tweaked for efficiency. Quality comes at a cost. If quality needs to be retained and sustained, the only prudent thing to do is hire a good school principal who understands the fundamentals of school management and let them run the show based on the principles laid out here. Compromising on quality and values always benefits the competitor in the long run. I hope the managements and trustees are listening?

How To Improve Teaching Quality in Indian Private Schools?

2012-03-05T11:29:00.003+02:00

Private schools, especially in India, have been facing a talent crunch for a long time now. Not only do they pay much lower salaries when compared to the other service sectors like IT and banking, the teachers are overworked and mostly do not have any opportunity to enhance their skills. Motivation is also low among teachers owing to all these. As a result there is a very high attrition rate so serious that the schools are forced to advertise many times over in a single academic year for the same position!

And since the teaching conditions are abundantly clear and the pay is pathetic, it’s becoming a Herculean task to attract even relatively inexperienced teachers!

Private schools, serious about quality at some point of time would be forced to look inward, ponder over and change their recruitment policies. So, is there a way they can attract the right talent and retain them? Is it possible to fool-proof the recruitment system in order to avoid teachers leaving midway through the academic year? Given below are some ideas. (Apart from giving a decent salary that is comparable to what they might earn if they’re employed in the outsourcing industry, the schools will have to focus their priorities on retaining talented teachers. So the school managements could opt for one of the two models listed below)

Model 1- Long Term Retention programme (Creating an in-house research and training team)

As this model states, this is only for those teachers who are willing to give a legal commitment for a longer period of time.

A decent pay package.

Compulsory end of year teacher-training at school’s cost.

Determining the performance improvements after training and giving further incentives to successful teachers. (Keeping them happy)

Collecting feedback from all trainees and evaluating it.

Evaluating the benefits of the present training in the next academic session and making suitable changes to the next year’s training programme.

Mentoring the performance of under-achieving teachers by the successful ones with promise of incentives over his/her protégé’s success.

Continuously successful teachers to be considered as teacher trainers after 4–5 years.

Model 2- For those not willing to/not sure of committing themselves

A decent pay package.
Optional end of year teacher training programme to be paid for by the teacher (more in the nature of a security deposit than making money!)
Reimbursing the training cost to all successful teachers with added incentives on par with successful teachers in Model1 in case they wish to stay.
Reimbursing the training cost of under-achieving teachers if they wish to continue for the next academic year.
Mentoring performance of under-achieving teachers by the successful ones with promise of incentives over his/her protégé’s success
Continuously successful teachers to be considered as teacher trainers after year 4 or 5.

For this to work, the training sessions have to contain clearly quantifiable performance markers for teacher performance, one that comprehensively takes into account not only the teachers’ subject knowledge but also their teaching skills, evaluation skills et al. Well this is easier said than done. Therefore, the managements and the school heads have to make sure to find well-experienced teacher trainers.

Related Posts