HT Top Schools Survey 2016: Schools save teaching sessions to share, reuse

Many schools are asking teachers to save their lesson plans and teaching modules in a ‘safe bank’, so that the same can be used by a future generation of teachers to ensure quality teaching

You can credit it to an increase in the use of technology or blame it on a lack of good teachers, but city schools are leaving no stone unturned to ensure good teaching sessions are saved to be used again.

Many schools are asking teachers to save their lesson plans and teaching modules in a ’safe bank’, so that the same can be used by a future generation of teachers to ensure quality teaching.

At Children’s Academy group of schools, the management put together a team of their senior teachers and experts to look at the teaching plans of current teachers and work on them so that it can be used at all three of their schools in Mumbai. “This website will have limited access and one can just click on the links to check out embedded videos, diagrams and Powerpoint presentations, which can be used while conducting a lecture,” said Rohan Bhatt, chairperson of the group. He said the school has also incorporated a feature on the website that helps them track what every teacher is teaching in class in order to find out if anyone one is lagging behind on the syllabus.

Some schools are using Google Drive to save teaching modules so that each and every teacher can see exactly what is being taught. This feature also comes in handy when a teacher quits the post mid-year, and helps the new teacher pick up from where the previous one left off.

While this concept of saving lesson plans is fairly new in most schools, a bunch of them have managed this task for quite some time now. The management of Podar International School in Khar made sure that they invested in one of the best applications that connects teachers the world over. “We invested in an app called Atlas, which is one of the most expensive ones currently, through which our teachers can share their lesson plans with other teachers from across the world. Not only do they get to share lessons, but also learn new pedagogy that are applicable worldwide,” said Vandana Lulla, principal of the school.

With internet at their disposal, many schools have started warming up to this idea and while most schools are keeping this feature secretive, others have also pledged to share their teaching modules with teachers of other schools. “The idea is to promote good quality teaching for all children, so we have encouraged all schools to share their modules with others to get the best results. Hopefully, the same will be applied soon,” said Rekha Shahani, from Kamla High School in Khar.