On 07/02/2011 12:12 AM, jtd@mtnl.net.in wrote:
On Friday 01 Jul 2011 19:00:59 Rony wrote:
I am not sure who JTD was replying to and what equipment is used in Khalapur and how.
OLPC and a server with offline wikipedia
The teachers should not be making slide shows or any content unless they feel inclined to. Professional grade slides, videos etc. should be purchased by the school and that is where money should be invested. The level of the content material should be like those in National Geographic or Discovery channel.
That is precisely what you dont want to do - buying someone else's idea of an idea. Content creation must be part of the students work, whereby they can directly feel the original idea. Amit Dhakulkar's use of a gps to teach physics, maths and geography is one such. Kids in Khalapur recording tales told by their grandparents is another. Many such absolutely interesting stuff in Khalapur.
If a subject / topic is to be understood for the first time by a student, how will the discovering method work unless he has some clue of what he needs to discover. Somewhere someone through any means of communication ( Amit D. in your example) will have to introduce the chapter / topic to the students. The beauty of professionally made videos is that this introduction opens up a new world to the kids. They don't just tell you what happens, but why does it happen, how does it happen and what are the consequences. The special cameras, the high resolution images, the timed photos turned into videos, their painstaking number of months / years spent to make one film, all make the entire experience so beautiful and it cannot be replicated in a home made video. During the good old DD days, we had those German Transtel science videos that were so informative and mind opening. As a recreation or as a practical lesson, self made videos are fun though. Everything of these is needed in equal doses to make learning fun. Classroom + Practicals + Videos + Field Trips = Learning Fun.