The beauty of Kashmir and the missing fast food

My sister and I recently had the opportunity to visit Srinagar and Pahalgam in Kashmir.  It was a God sent vacation that the two of us decided to go on. We visited Kashmir after a good many years. We had last been there as children, on a family vacation. It was a ‘Going back down memory lane’ trip.

The scenic beauty of Pehalgam is unparalleled. No other hill station that I have visited in the hill state of Himachal can compare to the beauty of Kashmir, largely because of its untampered beauty. It retains its natural beauty and has not been converted into a concrete jungle by greedy developers. 

What caught me by surprise was the fact that I did not come across a single fast food joint. There was no KFC or Dominoes or Pizza Hut outlet to be seen. Unlike Chandigarh, and other places in India I am sure, these outlets thrive and are a great favourite among youngsters.  Fast food has become an integral part of our lifestyles.

I inquired from the taxi driver if there were any fast food outlets in Srinagar or Pehalgam. He gave me an amazed look as though  he thought I was craving for them.  I assured him that I was not dying without fast food and that I was just curious.

I then started looking for overweight Kashmiris, and not surprisingly, I hardly saw any! They were all slim and trim and physically fit. I could give the credit to the amount of walking people there do and the healthy food they eat. On reaching back home, I goggled for outlets of  fast food joints in Srinagar and Pehalgam. I found two outlets of Cafe Coffee Day in Srinagar and none in Pehalgam. Apart from these, there were no other fast food joints that I could locate.

I don’t want to delve into the reason for the missing Fast Food, but the effects were quite visible. “What would I have done if I lived here?” I thought to myself.  I would have landed up making my favourite pizzas and pastas at home. It is easier said than done!!!

Paper.li link for this week

1. Animoby- easily create presentation
2.100 free writing prompts for your students
3.8 new great educational web tools-ET and mobile learning
4.Top 5 educational TED talks by kids

follow the link

http://paper.li/LearngEngineers/1379295860

Assessments...

Yesterday I went to my younger daughter’s school for parent teacher meeting. As I was walking down the corridor I overheard a father scolding his small boy. He had probably seen the son’s assessment sheets in which the boy had not faired well. I vividly remember the expression on the child’s face. He wore a frightened look and was on the verge of crying. Is this all that a parent ought to do about his child’s performance?  To see the report card at the end of term and get angry at the child. Would it not be better to monitor the child’s progress more often, be a partner in his learning, motivate him and help him work on his weaknesses on a regular basis.

I remember another incident in which a mother was talking to her friends. She said “I don’t bother, I am not a stickler for marks”. This child wasn’t doing well on the academic front either, she still isn’t.  It is  good not to get disturbed on seeing the marks on a test but tests are a good indicator of the learning of the child and they  must given due importance. If the marks are not good find out (from the child or teacher) where the child needs help and take remedial measures immediately. Be partners in your child’s learning. Especially so in a day school! They say a stitch in time saves nine.

Inknowation- way to engage and manage your class.....

The picture reminds of my class.  I can fit my whole class of 32 into one of these categories except the last one.  Sketchers are common in lower classes.  The students in this class love to write on the blackboard in the teacher’s absence.  Ninety percent of them are full of energy. I would not say they are hyperactive.  They need to be engaged and as teachers it is our duty to guide them so that they channelize their energy in a positive direction.  Why do these children lose their interest when they reach higher class?  Are we making a mistake to train them in a proper way?  We need to transform the way in which we teach and teach differently.  If possible, teach them according to their talents and follow an interdisciplinary approach so that they enjoy-learn-compare.

 Teaching profession is exciting and most of the time challenging even for an effective teacher with many years of experience.  Every year we have to face a different set of students. Although I am teaching the same topic since years but my approach towards teaching the topic is changing every year.  We need to change our approach so that the students must be able to manage themselves and we have more time to teach them. During the initial years of my teaching experience I felt that students of that age must face the challenges may be because my teachers trained us this way.   After few years I realized that the strength of one student is the weakness of the other.  The biggest challenge is how to make the whole class remain focused and look forward to come to the class with lots of willingness to learn.  Focused does not mean the class needs to be quiet all the time. There are always few students who are cause distraction and challenging the teacher.  We should find a strategy to engage them and maximize classroom management with controlled noise level so that everyone remains focused throughout the class period. The classroom activity that we prepare for the class must be short and meaningful. Allow kids to discuss in the class. It is especially beneficial to students who are generally hesitant to share in front of the whole class. Children must be asked to explain their thinking.  This gives them a chance to organize their ideas and extend their understanding without delay.  I liked the idea Mr. Vijay Mandke telling us to ask our students to explain the method in which they would solve a mathematical problem using words in each step. Although it is time consuming we can try it out with slow learners.  Our aim should not be finish the course in lower classes but to provide quality education and strengthen their basic foundation.  Do not neglect any child everyone has the potential and he/she will be able to excel in their own way. As teachers we need to bring out their hidden talents and teach our subject in the way they will understand.We need to adopt an indirect method through our experiences to tap the students passion and interest .  This way our students will become self-regulated individual.  I share you with you few methods in the near future.

updated paper

Updated paper.li link on Teaching Strategies for 21st century students.

1.Educational Technology and Mobile learning
2.6 good ways to create online learning spaces for your students
3.Interesting items like twitter etiquettes
4.Embed videos with google drive- tips


http://paper.li/LearngEngineers/1379295860

Paper.li link for this week  : Teaching Strategies for Autism kids

http://paper.li/LearngEngineers/1379900397

Kolb's Experiential learning cycle Database

All the items in the database were experienced by me while doing M.Tech Course and I have categorised them using Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle
 First Row-Concrete Experience - Feeling
Second Row-Reflective Observation- Watching
Third Row-Abstract Conceptualising- Thinking
Fourth Row-Active Experimentation-Doing


Please click on the image to view clearly

ET for Experiential Learning

Here is a database of tools teachers and students can use in  ET for Experiential Learning based on Kolb's  Experiential Learning cycle.

Are we encouraging our students enough..........

I have been teaching Mathematics for the past 20 years. Teaching this subject is tough sometimes, especially if the students starts facing problems to comprehend the questions. The students are still learning. We generally ask them to practice similar questions if they cannot grasp easily. When we give extra work for our students we must make them realise that we are helping them to learn and building up their confidence level not to lose interest in the subject. Once the teachers believe in the abilities of the students they tend to put in their best effort even if they are not interested. At that age it is very important to keep their spirits high by constant verbal encouragement. Another best way to write positive remarks in the report card. As a class teacher I have learnt to write remarks in a positive form only. Few of them are ' she has the potential to do well in academics, she must not be discouraged by her marks, but keep working hard to obtain the grades that suit her potential, and so on. My father used to tell me 'everything that happens is for good' which I now pass it to my dear ones who sometimes feel they are facing problems in life. I do not know whether my batch of seventh standard was good from before or have I indirectly motivated them through Edmodo virtual classes. I feel more relaxed when I teach them. This class I feel have started becoming independent workers.

paper.li link for this week on teaching strategies on 21st century learners

http://paper.li/LearngEngineers/1379295860

Paper li ...... easiest way to create your own online newspaper .............. an example of Informal Learning

It only takes a few minutes to set up a custom newspaper on your topic of choice.

The platform. Unparalleled power.

The key to a great newspaper is a great newsroom. The Paper.li platform gives you access to an ever-expanding universe of articles, blog posts, and rich media content. Paper.li automatically processes more than 250 million social media posts per day, extracting & analyzing over 25 million articles. Only Paper.li lets you tap into this powerful media flow to find exactly what you need, and publish it easily on your own online newspaper.

 Steps:

1.      Select your sources. The newsroom.

Quickly and easily add any combination of content sources to create your news site. Then prioritize them and add filters to best reflect the type of news you want. Not interested in a certain site or content contributor? No problem. You can control the sites and individual contributors that appear on your news site.

It supports numerous sources such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube and RSS feeds as just about all other content from across the web.

2.      Customize. Make it your own.

Give your audience the news they want, when they want it -- and in their language. Define the frequency and update times for your news site, the topic sections that should be covered and in the language that speaks to your audience! Then add a little pizzazz to your paper with a custom color and font scheme and upload a background image to finish it off.

3.      Promote. Grow an audience.

Paper.li has awesome promotional tools to help you promote your new site, your business and you - and all for free!

Let us help you promote your news with our award winning promotional tweet, daily email digests, and fully embeddable news widgets for your site or blog. All of our tools are designed to help engage, grow and retain the right audience looking for your news.

 Sources: http://paper.li/learn-more.html

They leave footprints on my heart.........

I am an animal lover, love to have pets and have had all kinds of pets in my life,  from cats and dogs to birds, a tortoise and various stray animals that we have adopted and looked after. Each one of them has a special place in my heart. I often wonder and am amazed how the stray  animals always seem to find me, or for that matter, my father, my nephew and other animal lovers like us.

One year we found two helpless, newly born kittens in the backyard. Their mother had   probably died after giving birth to them. My father promptly arranged a baby feeder for them.  These little kittens grew up to be handsome cats. Another time a tiny baby squirrel appeared out in our front garden.

But the Robin chicks take the cake. Almost every year one or two chicks fall out of their nests but are too tiny to fly. They are rescued by my children. By now, even our pet dog knows that these chicks will find a place in our household. He creates a hullabaloo on spotting these little chicks fallen out of their nests, with the mother and father birds chirping at the top of their voices and various other birds creating a racket, sitting guard on nearby  trees and the overhead wires. One year two little chicks were rescued and brought into the house, as we could not locate their nest and put them back in. Also, the furious birdie parents hovering overhead made it impossible to locate the nest. We could not possibly leave them inside as they would have made a tasty meal for the stray cat. And so, as usual, they entered our house.               

It is not always that these animals survive, and when they die, they cause tremendous heartbreak.

I remember an incident from my childhood when an uncle and his friend went hunting and killed a doe, only to discover two helpless baby deer that they had made orphan. So each of them took one baby deer home. Some charity they did! The one that came to my grandfather’s farm was called Jack. He grew up to be a young and handsome deer, running around in the fields and at times destroying the crop, till one fine day the officials from the wildlife department turned up and took him away.  They put him in a zoo at Dehradun, as it was illegal to have a wild animal for a pet. For many years to come, we cousins visited the zoo to meet him and Jack would come running when we called out to him.

What amazes me is that why and how do these animals find a way into our household and our hearts, year after year. Perhaps it is nature’s way of sending them to people who care or it is simply that we see things that others don’t?

Paper.li link- an online newspaper
Topic : Differentiated Learning

Differentiated instruction and assessment (also known as differentiated learning or, in education, simply, differentiation) is a framework or philosophy for effective teaching that involves providing students with different avenues to acquiring content; to processing, constructing, or making sense of ideas; and to developing teaching materials and assessment measures so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of differences in ability. Students vary in culture, socioeconomic status, language, gender, motivation, ability/disability, personal interests and more, and teachers need to be aware of these varieties as they are planning their curriculum. By considering varied learning needs, teachers can develop personalized instruction so that all children in the classroom can learn effectively.
 Differentiated classrooms have also been described as ones that are responsive to student variety in readiness levels, interests and learning profiles. It is a classroom where all students are included and can be successful. To do this a teacher sets different expectations for task completion for students based upon their individual needs. (Ref- http://en.wikipedia.org)

Link : http://paper.li/f-1378902181

paper.li link for this week 9-16th September

 Teaching Strategies  Vasumathy http://paper.li/LearngEngineers/1378686612

Research Skills by Harleen http://paper.li/vasumathy3/1378383121

At every stage of our life we have lots of experiences. Right from the time we are in this world we learn a lot from variety of people we come across who teach us something or the other. We grow up as good human beings and start focusing more towards our family and together we learn to live. After marriage we learn from our own children at home and in school. On every teachers day I feel very happy to have chosen this profession to serve the society directly. If I had not a good teacher I would not be writing this now.  I would like to wish everyone on this occasion for moulding me and guiding me.

Let Us Know!!

Using surrounding games as demonstration tools to create active learning environment in classroom and developing low cost effective pedagogical tools may be a promising solution that enable us to gear-up learners’ inventiveness and potentiality to the desired level.

 It would be very fascinating and economical too to develop an instructional technique which is based on traditional games that students and teachers are familiar with and would be able to relate with them realistically. This method is named as ‘Game Based Teaching Model.’ It is an initiative to bring Indian traditional games into the mainstream through connecting them with the curriculum and pedagogy. To know more stay tuned.... with learning engineers....

The Day began with some special greetings from a few of the students who value the contribution  teachers make in their lives. I share two of the messages which are simple but deep enough to make me proud to be teacher.

A teacher is always true!We are fortunate to have a teacherAs wonderful loving and caring as you!Happy Teachers Day

I may not say it always.
But, I mean it whenever I say it.
Thank You Teacher
For all the things you have done for me.
Happy Teachers Day!

Teachers' Day

It is on days like these that we teachers realize why we choose to be teachers. All the love and affection that our students shower on us on this day are enough for us to energize and motivate us again and again, year after year.  The flowers, hand made cards and the decorations in the classroom that the students in my school put up, not to mention the special program organised for the teachers made the day so special and fun.
This day gives me enough drive to last me for a lifetime, builds the unspoken bond between me and my students, helps me believe in myself and makes me feel loved, wanted and respected. It is a good feeling to know that my students reciprocate my love and affection.

Learning Theories in Education

Learning theories predict and explain behavior. When applied to education, we can design a large number of teaching/Learning activities based on these theories. These activities can be built keeping in mind the in individual differences in the learning styles of the students and help in engaging the learner by providing a variety and interest .