int Youtube Blogger Linkedin Twitter Facebook

Donors

One Touch at a Time
-from MindTree Foundation Journal

Running MindTree Foundation exposes us to new learning every day with every interaction. More often than not, just plain realities of life. But learning, nonetheless. During a recent field visit, I had a "learning overload" which became the trigger for this note. More...

 

Asha, Washington D.C.
Report by Manju and Madhav

We had the opportunity to visit a couple of government schools in Kanakapura district, on the outskirts of Bangalore, to see how Sikshana's intervention is helping improve the quality of education being provided to dozens of young girls and boys. Unlike other non-profits working in the field of education, Sikshana has adopted a slightly different approach by actively working with the government to improve existing schools. In the first phase, it "adopted" about 3 dozen schools in and around Bangalore, and was able to show significant improvement in student attendance, participation and overall learning ability through some fairly simple activities. In subsequent phases, the number of schools has increased to around 150 which represents the entire Kanakapura district.

Sikshana's model is to help fill the gaps in the current education process in government schools. One is by providing a certain amount of funds for "infrastructure" such as class supplies, library books etc. It's hard to believe, but most govt schools get only around Rs 2000 per year for such materials, which is barely enough to get by, let alone provide the kind of learning that these young minds are clearly seeking. They also actively engage students by taking them to book fairs and allowing them to select the books, as opposed to having the books provided by the teachers or the govt. This gives the ownership to the students, which is a powerful motivating factor. Small prizes for class participation encourage students to speak up and voice their opinion, and the annual competition to select students across the district for a week long trip to Delhi is perhaps the crowning achievement of Sikshana's impact.

Our visit on Dec 22 coincided with the distribution of thumb drives to a group of students at one Sikshana school. One might ask - what would students in a rural school be doing with thumb drives? Thanks to support from local corporates, Sikshana has provided each school with one or two laptops for use by the children. These are typically used for creative activities like drawing and painting, and supplement the regular learning from textbooks. Since children have to share the laptop, they need a way to store their work to be used at a later date. Thumb drives were seen as the answer, and over a thousand were donated by the Adobe foundation.

Upon arrival at the first school, we were greeted by the headmistress (most of the school staff are women) and a group of around 50 children of various ages standing in the school courtyard for morning assembly. Part of the assembly consists of reading out headlines from the daily newspaper, in both Kannada and English. One of the headlines for the day was about Barack Obama! The students all seemed curious about the visitors, and were very lively in answering the questions that we posed.

 

Students at morning assembly

  

Speaking with the parents

Prior to the distribution of thumb drives to the students, the school staff first described the purpose of the thumb drives to the children's parents. Almost two dozen mothers and fathers from the local community sat in the room, perhaps all seeing a thumb drive for the first time in their lives. The teachers and Sikshana staff encouraged parents to visit the school and see how their children were using the thumb drives. We then all trooped outside and each parent handed a thumb drive to their child.

 

Handing over the thumb drives

  

Students with their new thumb drives

We also visited another school where the students rushed out to meet us as we entered. What impressed us the most was the confidence with which they interacted with us, asking lots of questions and responding to ours with great ease. Quite unlike the stereotype of a government school, where one imagines absent teachers and bored school children, this school was filled with the noisy laughter and chatter of children. Some of the students wanted to try their hand at the camcorder we were carrying and took turns filming various parts of the school. They were also eager to show us the scale model of the school that they had built, by taking painstaking measurements of each and every classroom. The model was impressive, particularly in the attention to detail - clearly these students had put in a lot of effort and were proud of their achievement.

 

Model built by students

  

Budding artist at work!

We also got to see some of the students using the laptop with the thumb drive. One bright young boy quickly put together a little sketch of a village scene complete with little huts, trees and a river flowing nearby. It was something that any small child could have drawn with paper and pencil, except he was using the mouse as deftly as one would handle a crayon. Clearly the digital divide is being bridged in rural India, and the students at these schools supported by Sikshana are leading the way.

We look forward to the continued success of Sikshana and hope that their unique model for educational intervention is actively copied across the country.