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
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27 - 11 - 2010