Dangers of a good resource

Dangers of a good resource
"Imagine a few balls held together and stationary at a place. Now imagine several small balls revolving around the balls at the centre, like what happens in our solar system. Except that the sun is replaced by a group of balls... Are you able to see what I am saying?"
"We don't understand it, just show us the Learnext videos" replies a student.

SILENCE! It was a very irritating silence. This was what happened in one of my classes recently. It wasn't a welcome sign to get back to teaching after a long gap. The last couple of weeks or so have been challenging for me to revive my interest and moreover accept the circumstances and plan my way ahead. I have had 2 very disturbing experiences - one of them was the above and the other with a group of teachers.

On November 13th, I was addressing was a gathering of 86 primary school science teachers at the Block Resource Centre at H D Kote. On the evening of the previous day I was given a list of topics of science to talk about. I chose topics primarily from physics and spent about 6 hours planning for the programme. I tried to stay within the syllabus of the Higher Primary School and wanted to primarily clarify their conceptual doubts. But only later did I realize that I got it wrong. I was of the opinion that if I can help teachers understand the concepts, they would put in their efforts to come up with newer ideas and customize their teaching as per the students in their classes. But what teachers were looking forward from this "training programme" was a ready-made package which they could directly deliver in a class. They just wanted to be postmen who deliver letters on time and in good condition (They just don't want to break your head about the content).

The other incident was something on these lines again. In both cases, the teachers and students have access to  resources - wonderful teaching materials, teaching aids and so many other things. Our world is surely a smaller place. Now a days, our teachers are able to teach better and students are able to understand better. But nothing comes for free.Teachers understand lesser and students think even lesser. All the teaching aids we have, have made the teachers and students less creative. They can't imagine abstract things, read lesser! Any small challenge in front of them and they are looking for support.

This is going to affect the creativity of teachers and students. I have seen quite a few students come up with ready made kits as part of their projects! What is happening? Are we ever going to break our heads, burn our fingers and dirty our dress for understanding how something works and may be get something to work. When resources are limited... thats when everything happens. I think it is time for us to have a look at the resources more critically and then decide what is that we need the most.

--buddi
0029
27 - 11 - 2010

Ambiguous goals

I have been having several ideas for the last few months but have written about hardly any. So, here I decided to at least write briefly about a few. Ambiguity is rooted in almost every move of our daily routine. Here are some questions I have..

Ambiguous goals - Every time we set our goals, we deeply rely on our resources and instincts so much that we rarely give importance to how we actually set our goals. I wouldn't call it a mistake that we do as it gives us a chance to reflect back on how we would have done better. Learning from experience (and not mistakes)! Here are my examples -

1. How does GRID operate? When I founded GRID, I thought I was very clear with my goals. GRID would work on agriculture, education and rural technologies; and myself being comfortable with the educational sector (just a feeling that I could do something) made that my immediate priority. I went ahead and discussed my ideas with several people and many seemed quite interested. We conducted competitions, workshops and held discussions in schools and with teachers in varied schools and have had a good response almost everywhere. We were approaching someone or were being approached, thought over what they needed (our thoughts), packaged it into some workshop or competition and then delivered it. However, today after 4 years of work and thought behind me, I have this doubt - did I get it right? And I started pushing my ever reliables, Anirudh and Sneha, to think. What exactly were our goals? Who was our target group? What was our strategy? We seemed to have played around with those according to our convenience.
2. What made IKC the ultimate goal of IViL? This issue involves a lot of us and I don't speak for them. The idea of setting up IKC at Natham was thrown up Prof. JBL at a time when IViL had energy in the form of new members and a laboratory in the form of Natham. It came at a time when many questioned why we were still sticking onto Natham. IKC was meant to be the perfect answer from a technological institute group for the rural people's needs. It was meant to facilitate a knowledge exchange between us and the people there. A perfectly running IKC was meant to be our stepping stone onto exploring possibilities in other villages, in a way saying GOOD BYE to Natham. After going through few of the reports prepared by the MSI students, IKC for me had a great vision and if achieved would be one of the best accomplishments of the group. As we went into the discussion, planning and implementation stages, we forgot to ask questions - Is this needed? (I don't remember any of us discussing whether IKC is needed) Is this the best way? (Much of our planning and implementation were never synchronized, leading to a lot noise in the group) Where does this lead to? (Many of the problems with the IKC were not surprising) And finally the big question - What did we learn? We had problems in answering every question. We were so obsessed with the idea of getting it running and then getting out of Natham that we never cared to think of those. I feel we as a group lacked clarity in what and why we were doing.
3. Where is SciTour heading? Another group, another idea, another time. SciTour was launched on Jan 1st, 2010 to publish articles to help people enjoy science.

In all of the 3 cases above, I feel we lacked clarity in what our goal was. We were just doing those because we felt that we were good at it. Is that the way to select to do something? Today I would say NO.

I feel it would be much better for us to set our goals first and then do everything that requires to be done to achieve those goals. In case of Natham, had our goal been to help it become a socially, economically, environmentally and culturally a better place to live in - we would still be there in Natham trying to get more people to use toilets, more kids to go to schools, more of the SHGs functioning, work with the farmers to build sustainable and profitable agricultural processes and get people to mingle with each other breaking down the caste barriers in the village. Alas, that isn't the case. When I look back at my journey in the last 4 years and interactions with different people - much has changed. I have learnt a lot from these experiences. However, somewhere deep inside I know they are mistakes (and not experiences).

--buddi

0225

16 - 11 - 2010