'Pokemon' to help kids in Delhi govt schools

Education has transcended books to enter the media as TV characters are used to teach kids, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 25, 2006, 21:18:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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There is only one constant to learning in schools - innovation in teaching. It works wonders if adopted properly, said an analysis on innovations in teaching under Sarva Siksha Abhiyan.

Pokemon, an animated character, helped students in Delhi government schools to grasp what they learnt till primary level, before graduating to the upper primary level.

"It helps students to understand the lessons as they can relate with Pokemon easily than with a character in a book," said Siksha Sangam, a compilation of the unique learning models.

The Delhi model has been indigenously prepared by State Council for Education Research and Training (SCERT)and was initially introduced in 200 schools and is now being expanded to another 300 schools. A similar programme for classes till X is also being developed.

Computer would not have worked in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, but a school on a boat brought children from 170 deprived families to classrooms.

Bring the children to schools under National Child Labour Project had failed. "Providing schools close to their homes helped," the compilation said. These families are living on boats for decades.

The best methods are not restricted to conventional schools. Even minorities can gain if they are ready to modify madrassa system of learning as done in West Bengal.

Along with religious teaching, conventional books translated in Arabic are being taught, thereby helping the students to compete with others. Specialised training under SSA has been given to teachers for the new modules.

Girls in schools in Gujarat are being used as a tool to impart education to mothers. In Gujarat, class VII schools girls took the task of educating their mothers with the help of SSA volunteers.

In Haryana, a state with lowest sex ratio in the country, bicycles helped in retaining girls in schools. The state government has bicycles to 21,000 girls who have taken admission in upper primary level.

Hundreds of such examples are listed in the compilation, which can now be replicated in different parts of the country. “We want to study the new innovations in learning and see whether can be implemented in other parts of the country. There can also be an answer for a particular problem in a schools in Assam with an innovative method adopted in Kerala,” a senior ministry official said.

The official added that the study shows that learning cannot be limited to just classrooms. There have been successful projects on multi-lingual teaching, teaching about neighbourhood and reading material for vocations, which have improved students learning capabilities.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan@hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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