Designing India’s Future Classrooms

Friday, June 4th 2010 by David MorriscloseAuthor: David Morris Name: David Morris
Email: hospedfoundation@yahoo.com
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About: I am a Director of the new ISTE affiliate for India, the India Council for Integral Education (“ICIE”.) For us in India, the use of technology is a critical variable, but only one as India’s primary and secondary schools look to take a great leap forward in the next five years. Education in India not only needs tech, it needs a total transformation to bring a 20th century school structure into the 21st century. ICIE reflects this global diversity: our Directors live in Delhi, Mumbai, Pondicherry, Eugene, Oregon and a village outside Chennai and will travel this year throughout Europe and Asia as well all over the US, from coast to coast. ICIE begins with model Teacher Training Institutes at the lower level of the pyramid and membership all over India, training, supporting and linking together the master teachers and master facilitators of India’s schools. I live in India. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, raised in rural Tamil Nadu, an alumni of Kodaikanal International School in the Palani hills near the Kerala border, a Highlander Institute trained educator with a B.A. from Emory & Henry, a doctorate in higher education administration from Antioch’s Union for Experimenting Colleges & Universities and a MBA from the Institute for Financial Management & Research in Chennai, India. A year in south Asian studies at the University of Virginia as well. 7 years a free-lance writer in West Virginia. 12 years in San Francisco, Silicon Valley and China in the disk drive industry. In 1991, following my father’s death, like a dutiful Indian eldest son, I returned to Tamil Nadu. In Madras. Now called Chennai. Over 10,000,000 people in 450 sq km. Here the threads of modern India all come together: tech, tradition, education, art, writing, fusion culture and cuisine, classical Indian culture and mobile phone banking. Here is the top of the pyramid and the bottom of the pyramid, most often side by side. All the fusion of India and the globe, constantly in process, constant transformation all around. Such is the world I inhabit now. A great deal of masala in my curries, my friendships and my work.See Authors Posts (17)

Having introduced some of the parameters of educational transformation in India, let’s move on to an activity. After all, in project based learning there is always an activity.  I’d like your help to direct India’s use of educational technology for the country’s more than 200 million students.

Pull out a blank sheet of paper and sketch a classroom that can hold at least 100 students. Add a blackboard, an electric plug and a teacher trained in elementary use of personal computer. You can also add a classroom assistant for the 100 children. This is what a modern classroom looks like in India.

In 3-5 years, it should be 30 children in that classroom. That’s the new legal limit for classroom size under the Right To Education Act.

Go ahead and add wi-fi if you want. Some of the better private schools have this now. Wi-fi (or WIMAX, in certain areas) will come to government schools within the next 3-5 years as well. You can also add a TV for each classroom. The TV is usually hooked to a CD player, but not to a dish TV or cable hook-up. That could be easily and inexpensively changed.

Now let’s implement the learning plan for this activity. What are the educational technologies that will leverage the capability of the teacher, provide additional access to information for the students, challenge their creativity as learners, leverage the use of learning software, and qualitatively transform the learning ability of India’s children?

Educators have dealt with the absence of educational technology in India by using the earliest forms of learning: repetition of key knowledge combined with handwriting in copybooks. It works, in a fashion. This method is best for learners who do well in repetitive tasks. It works poorly for children who are creative or imaginative and rebel at the seemingly endless memorization of facts, figures and formulas, which are then promptly forgotten.

There are clues to this activity as to what has worked in various pilot projects. The site thinkquest.org, from Oracle Educational Foundation, is one good example of a project that works. Oracle Educational Foundation has done pioneering work in getting think.com out to one of the largest central India government networks of schools. There are other such success stories, but they are still at the pilot stage. Generation I, ready for the generation II work of mass dissemination, which is a core part of the India Council for Integral Education (ICIE) mission.

Another boundary to note: since the average income in India is $4 a day – this is greatly improved from the classic $1 a day, but still $4 a day – how much can a government school afford to spend on educational technology? And in private schools, where the tuition varies between $2 a month at the village level to an average $1,000 a year for an urban Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) school, how much can be passed on to the parents?

Because all but very few schools are not endowed, the cost of educational technology has to be passed directly on to the parent. Parents will often pay, particularly if there are loan packages for bigger ticket items.

So does the government makes a commitment to buy 200 million laptops for children across India? Or do they make having a netbook or laptop mandatory for every student in Class XI and Class XII? It could be done. You can build it into your design.

There is one piece educational technology nearly everyone already does have: pre-paid cell phones. India has something like 400 million cell phone users and subscriber bases continue to grow. Cell phones are indispensable. So no matter how much you have to sacrifice, you get one. Does your vision of educational technology in India extend to cell phones? How would you use them?

Send me your ideas for the changes in India’s education system. Your answer may wind up on the desk of Kapil Sabal or even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. You’ve got until, say India’s Independence Day, on August 15, 2010. I can’t wait to see your classroom.

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