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IISER, Pune uses activity-based videos to engage students
The centre is dedicated to training teachers and conducting workshops for making science fun through various hands-on activities and teaching aids using readily available, inexpensive material for children
If the lockdown posed a major challenge before kids and their parents, the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) has found an innovative way to engage students and teachers in hands-on learning.
The Indrani Balan Science Activity Centre (SAC) at IISER took a lead to create basic activity-based videos on science and mathematics that is keeping students engaged and providing them with a learning experience. The centre is dedicated to training teachers and conducting workshops for making science fun through various hands-on activities and teaching aids using readily available, inexpensive material for children.
“These activities explore concepts in science and mathematics in an engaging manner. So far, we have developed and uploaded images with stepwise instructions for over 150 activities. These activities explore various concepts in science and mathematics from state and other education boards’ syllabi for grades five to ten,” said Ashok Rupner, senior teaching assistant, IISER.
So far around 1 lakh students have engaged in these activities from Pune and outside with most of them in the age bracket of 11 to 16 years. Along with students, around 1,000 teachers benefited from online activities, according to IISER.
According to Rupner, activities in physics explore electricity, magnetism, electromagnetism, optics, air expansion, contraction, force, motion, gravitation, buoyancy, heat, pressure, and sound. Concepts in chemistry, biology, and mathematics are also documented.
These activities have benefitted students, especially now when most schools are either still closed or operating partially through an online medium. Presently, instructions in these activities are in English. The centre is working on translating them to Marathi.
Deepali Vikram Tare, science teacher with Acharya Shree Vijay Vallabh secondary school is one of them to have used these activities for teaching her classes online.
“These online activities help simplify the notions of science and maths and make it interesting for them. As all activity videos demonstrated by IISER has a scientific base, understanding the principle was easy and it has helped us to teach students by conducting the same activity as done by IISER,” said Tare.
Yash Kelkar, an eight standard student said it was a great experience for him and his brother.
“My brother and I both watched the session based on air pressure together. It was full of experiments which are very simple and very easy to do at home. We made a model vasudev cup as the material is readily available at our home. When the experiment was completed, we were very happy, and had a feeling that we can do it,” Kelkar said.
All activities conducted by IISER were related to school textbooks and material required for doing these activities was available at home. Since the material was available at home, conducting these activities and asking students to do it at home was easily possible.
“It was really a nice experience for me when my child was doing the experiment. It is very useful for him and brainstorming activity. It also reminded me of my childhood days. I am very thankful to IISER Team for such demonstrative sessions,” said Anagha Kelkar, mother of Yash Kelkar
