Rural Education

January 26 2021

নেতাজীর স্মরণে ইংরাজীতে নাটক করলো ছাত্র/ছাত্রীরা

kwweb Edtech, Education, Rural Education 0

By Team SLATO & Team Krishworks

নেতাজীর স্মরণে ইংরাজীতে নাটক করলো ছাত্র/ছাত্রীরা

Krishworks Hi-Tech English Center মানে শুধু ইংরাজী ভাষা শিক্ষাই নয় সাথে সাংস্কৃতিক চর্চার অন্যতম মাধ্যম হিসাবে ধরা যায়। তারই আরো একবার সাক্ষী থাকলো এলাকার মানুষ। দক্ষিণ ২৪পরগনার প্রত্যন্ত গ্রামাঞ্চলে অবস্থিত এই Hi-Tech English Center এর ছাত্র /ছাত্রীদের সাংস্কৃতিক নৈপুণ্যতা দেখে এলাকার মানুষ বিস্মিত হয়েছে বারবার। এবারো তার কোনো ব্যতিক্রম হলো না।

২৩শে জানুয়ারী নেতাজীর জন্মজয়ন্তী উপলক্ষ্যে এই এলাকার অগ্নিবীণা ক্লাবের পক্ষ থেকে আয়োজন করা হয় ২ দিনের ক্রীড়া ও সাংষ্কৃতিক অনুষ্ঠানের। সেখানে আমন্ত্রণ জানানো হয় Krishworks Hi-Tech English Center এর ছোটো ছোটো ছাত্র /ছাত্রীদের। মাত্র ৩দিনের ব্যবধানে কি করা যাবে এই ভাবতে ভাবতে প্র্যাক্টিস শুরু করে ছাত্র /ছাত্রীরা। মনে অদম্য সাহস আর শিক্ষকের সহযোগিতায় চলতে থাকে জোর প্রস্তুতি।

নির্দিষ্ট দিনে মঞ্চস্থ হলো সেই অনুষ্ঠান। ছোটো ছোটো ছাত্র /ছাত্রীরা ইংরাজীতে ঘোষণার মাধ্যমে শুভ সূচনা করে। শুরুতে সকলেই চমকে যায় ছোটোদের মুখে এই ঘোষণা শুনে। তারপর একে একে মঞ্চস্থ হয় “Singular Plural Drama” , “Doctor Patient Conversation” আর সব শেষে নেতাজীর স্মরণে তাঁরই উদ্দেশ্যে মঞ্চস্থ হলো “আজাদহিন্দ ফৌজের” উপরে একটি নাটক। হয়তো এমন অনুষ্ঠানের সাক্ষী থাকতে পেরে এলাকার সকল মানুষ খুবই আনন্দিত হলো। সম্পূর্ণ ইংরাজী ভাষাতেই সমস্ত অনুষ্ঠানটি পরিচালিত হতে দেখে এলাকার সকলেই বিস্মিত হয়ে যায়। অগ্নিবীণার সকল সদস্যরাই রীতিমতো আনন্দে ফেটে পড়ে।

Krishworks Hi-Tech English Center কে বিশেষ ভাবে সম্মানিত করা হয় তাদের এই নৈপুণ্যতা দেখে। স্মারক হিসাবে ওই সাংস্কৃতিক মঞ্চে ক্লাবের পক্ষ থেকে Krishworks Hi-Tech English Centerকে দেওয়া হয় নেতাজীর একটি ছবি ও একটি বিশেষ মানপত্র।

আনন্দে ভেসে যাওয়া নয় আগামী দিনে আরো দীর্ঘ পথ চলার সংকল্প গ্রহণ করে Krishworks Hi-Tech English Center এর সকলেই।

November 24 2019

Case Study: Parents Meet at Karimpur School – Project “Learn to Read”

blogger Edtech, Education, Rural Education, Uncategorized 0

By Krishworks Technology and Research Labs Pvt Ltd

Case Study: Parents Meet at Karimpur School – Project “Learn to Read”

Objective

The following were the objectives of this meeting :

Create a general awareness among the parents about the Learn <to> Read Project; the benefits of the program and why is it necessary for the students to be a part of this program.
Help the parents get a feel of the day to day class activities of the program.
Get live feedback from the parents on how this program is improving the learning capabilities of their kids.
Demonstrate in front of the parents few student performances showing what the students have been taught in the past few months.
Reward students with Certificates for excelling in various categories.

Awareness Program

The Program started off with an introductory speech by the Head-Mistress of Karimpur Girls School, Mrs Indrani Sikhdar. She spoke to the parents about Learn To Read project, Indus Net Foundation and Krishworks.

Workshop for the Parents

In order for the parents to get a feel of what exactly goes on inside the classroom, how their students are taught, what makes the learning fun and engaging we had organised a small workshop for the parents. The workshop was organised by the teachers from the Learn <to> Read project. Parents took part in phonics activity and video comprehension activity. While the parents enjoyed taking part in these activities, the students were more eager in taking part in these activities and we were prompted by out of the turn answers when questions were asked to their parents.

Demonstration by the Students

Although we had received names of more than 100 students who wanted to perform in front of their parents only a few students got the opportunity due to shortage of time. Students performed on “Interaction Activity”, “Self-Introduction Activity” and “Reading Activity”.

The Feedback Session

Parents were requested for feedback on the Learn <to> Read project, they were asked specific questions on whether they saw any change in their daughters after the start of the program, is this program benefiting their daughter and if they want this program to continue. Parents are happy about this program, everyone agreed that their daughters are getting loud and confident because of this program, they are able to read English Passages better these days. One of the parents informed us that her daughter is highly interested in this program, she reads books and if she gets stuck she uses google or dictionary to find the meanings of unknown words.

Speech by the Teachers of Learn To Read Project

Teachers shared their experiences in front of the parents; how this program has helped them to learn about the new methodologies of teaching and how privileged they feel to be a part of this project. They feel satisfied to be able to bring a change in the lives of their students, they are happy to see their students progressing gradually.

Speech on Behalf of Learn <to> Read Project, Indus Net Foundation, and Krishworks

Subhajit Roy, Co-Founder of Krishworks spoke to the parents on behalf of everyone involved in this project. Parents were made aware of the aims and objectives of the project, they were made to understand the importance of sending their daughters regularly to school and also to inform the same to those parents of girls who are not regular to school.

Distribution of Awards

Certificates were awarded to the students to reward as well as motivate them for their future classes. The certificates were awarded in the following categories.

Being Loud and Smart in the class
Happiest Student in the class
For being the most helpful student in the class
For having the best attendance
For scoring the highest marks
For being the most active student of the class
For being one of the most promising students of the class
For having the best communication
For having the best handwriting
For being able to read the best in the class

We especially honored the parents of the students with the best attendance by giving them a bouquet of flowers in front of everyone in the audience.

Conclusion – Felicitation of Teachers

Our Teachers are our last mile implementers. The program concluded with Krishworks felicitating all the teachers on behalf of everyone involved in the Learn <to> Read Project.

October 15 2019

Project Learn To Read by Krishworks Technology and Indusnet Foundation in Collaboration with Karimpur Girls High School

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Project Learn to Read by Krishworks Technology and Research Labs Pvt Ltd in Collaboration with IndusNet Foundation and Karimpur Girls High School, Nadia, West Bengal

Project Learn To Read by Krishworks Technology and Indusnet Foundation in Collaboration with Karimpur Girls High School

Imagine an institute in a remote village where students are assigned a text on Julius Caesar for their board exam assignment and they are stuck with comprehending. What do they do?

Can they walk up to their library to look for guide books and Wikipedia to extract the meanings, or where they are able to navigate ‘Hey Google’ feature and look up their queries.

How wonderful is that going to be!

Project Learn To Read was Launched with this Very Dream

Our aim is to uplift the reading levels of children and students living in rural Bengal and to make them smart, confident and independent individuals. We believe there will be a day when students across rural India will have Library membership, they will be able to look up words in the dictionary or Google and get their work done.To realize this dream Indus Net Foundation and Krishworks launched the Project Learn To Read at Karimpur Girls High School, Nadia with the sole aim to impact 539 Girl Students of Class 5 & 6.

The Recruitment

Since this school had a high student to teacher ratio, we recruited 5 new local teachers for our project. There were 3 sections in class 5 and 2 sections in class 6. We divided each section of class 5 into 3 batches and each section of class 6 in to 4 batches resulting in a total of 17 batches. These 17 batches were to be catered to by these newly recruited local teachers.

The group of teachers involved in the Project Learn To Read

The Evaluation

Students of classes 5 & 6 were made to undergo an “English Level Diagnosis” test to baseline their levels initially. Once that was done we graded them according to their levels.

The students were graded to the following levels

Teachers at Karimpur Girls High School Conducting English Level Diagnosis Test for the students. The setup involves a test sheet, a mobile/tablet along with a stand.

The Teacher Training

The village of Karimpur is a few kilometers from Bangladesh Border, it doesn’t have much of Christian Missionary schools etc so the local teachers are not expected to be well versed with the Latest English International Curriculum that we would ask to them teach. They needed training, training for the digital classroom that they were to use, a training on soft skills, a training on the curriculum and training to help them cater to every type of student that is present in the classroom. The teachers were trained initially for 1 month. The training was imparted by means of both online and offline medium.

Teacher Training at Karimpur Girls High School

Starting off with the Classes

Once the “English Level Diagnosis” Test was conducted on all students, they were grouped based on their reading levels and the “English Activity classes” started.

Krishworks team visited Karimpur whenever needed to manage and solve the issues faced by the principal and the teachers.

Managing the System

For any government school, management is an issue. Following are the daily chores of the teachers working under Learn <to> Read Project:

If you look at the above picture you will see that Karimpur Girls School is quite a sizeable school. The 3 storied building has classes on all 3 floors. Classes are of 40 minutes each. Since we have divided each section into 3 batches for class 5 and 4 for class 6; there is loss of valuable time as students moved from one room to another in between periods. Initially the allotted rooms were poles apart which created further problems.
There are around 539 students being impacted; books had to be distributed to all of them. Students have irregular attendance habits as a result it got very difficult to distribute the books on a single day and students kept coming asking for the books which was very tiresome for the teachers.
Krishworks system has a very strict system, teachers have to submit regular video assignments before conducting their classes; which got difficult for teachers as there are other works like checking homework, taking weekly tests etc.

There were more such challenges and we had to cater to all of them, In order to solve this, we designed a “Gamified” approach, a system to help the teachers develop problem solving capabilities for themselves and not be dependent on us.

We made a system of ‘In charge of the month’ for teachers wherein each teacher is made to monitor others for a month or two. That particular teacher is our Point of Contact for all sorts of communications. The teachers are assigned scores based on their monthly performance.

We have planned for a “Teacher Of The Year” award.

Krishworks Hi-Tech English Activity Classes: Create a healthy learning circle for teachers

Our objective has always been to create a sustainable system. The heroes of our system are the last mile implementers i.e the teachers. It is important to be sure that they are willing, they are motivated, they are passionate and they are trained well to execute the tasks.

Teachers are still in the process of training and sending us practice videos for various events. The self-recorded videos have not only made them confident, but has also improved their classes. They have peer review sessions and they are growing together.

The Unconventional Way

Ours is a sound and activity based pedagogy of learning. Here students get to play and participate in group activities, language drills, audio-visuals for lessons, chain activities and role-plays .

Rewards: Just like the curriculum, the performance badges for students are designed as: the most promising, most regular, loudest and smartest, one who raises hand the most, the happiest student etc.

All these interventions have not only provided a happy environment but has also increased their interest in learning. We are growing together as one big happy family.

What have we learnt and observed

Sadly our country still has 1st generation learners. Many students in government schools do not go to school regularly. Whether or not you pass or fail, you are promoted to the next class. This means that even if you don’t know how to write your name you are in the next class if you are of the right age. This has led to some of our students not even knowing even Bengali alphabets and numbers.We observed that attendance is directly proportional to performance. The students (and the parents) who do not come to school regularly lack awareness. These students are the ones who are performing poorly. They are usually first-generation learners who don’t know how to read and write the alphabet and numbers (both English and Bengali).

What are we doing

We are helping 3 sectors of society- the teachers, the students and parents to learn and grow together. Ours is a playground type system. Here we encourage and make the students and teachers confident. We inculcate values. Students learn to work and solve problems in groups. We believe every child has a right to entertainment despite the privileges. Because of the fact that our classroom is filled with fun we believe our class attendance will improve. All we need to do is run awareness campaigns and keep a measure of what all are being done.

We are solving Literacy problem through English.

What is the impact so far ?

Students are now communicative.The students who were very shy to speak up are gradually overcoming their hesitation. They now readily take part in short activities.

Student are gradually learning to overcome stage fear and performance pressure.

Teachers who were earlier nervous about this course have now taken ownership of the work and are happy that they too are getting to learn a lot.

Parents are delighted to have this project running in the school and they want this project to continue.

Class Performance: Assessment

Our diagnostic assessment (before and after exams) says around 50% of the students now have increase in their marks. Few of the students have also got 100% marks.

We have a long way to go and work and solve many other problems. Our biggest motivation is our students’ excitement about this new approach to learning. We have provided a happy environment for Government Girls School Karimpur students. We wish to replicate this project in many other such schools and provide a happy playground in those schools too.

When you share your joys, it multiplies. Help us, help them.

Going forward :

We are planning an awareness program for the parents who do not send their children regularly to school. If needed, we will stay in Karimpur for a week to meet and talk to parents as it is difficult to reach them over the phone. With regards to this we are organising the first Parents-Teacher meet cum workshop on 26th August 2019, Monday. Few students will be participating in this meet up showcasing what they have learnt till now. We will also be organising a short class for the parents where parents will get to feel what it is like to be in our classroom.
Extra classes will be arranged for students who do not identify alphabets and students with poor attendance. We believe that we will be able to solve the illiteracy problem and will be able to bring up the level of these students from letter level to early paragraph level in the next few months, (if they attend our classes regularly).
Small events will be arranged for confidence building of students and for community engagement.

October 5 2019

The Socio-Economic Model

kwweb Edtech, Education, Rural Education 0

At Krishworks we believe in creating sustainable socio-economic models which can thrive on its own; we believe in creating models which has the ability to impact as well as expand, models which can be easily replicated and implemented across demographics, models which doesn’t impact just one but a larger section of the society. We work hard to build models which create 100 times more value than the effort put towards building it. Few of our existing models are :

Tehatta-2 Model
Karimpur Model
Piali-Sonarpur Model

Tehatta-2 Model

Uplifting the Underprivileged Students of Rural India Through Tech Based English Activity Classes.

This is a block level model and is named after Tehatta-2 block in Nadia District of West Bengal, India. The primary aim of this model is to cause impact in all the Gram Panchayats of a particular block. The target segments are primary & upper primary students studying in low cost private schools. A Krishworks personnel called the Area Impact Manager equipped with tablets, a laptop, a speaker and a projector is in charge of creating awareness among school owners, school principals, school teachers, school going students and parents. Rural Low Cost Private Schools upgrade themselves by getting their teachers trained from Krishworks and by integrating our Hi-Tech English Class in their curriculum.

The Karimpur Model

Literacy Program Through Tech Enabled English Learning Entertainment and Activity Classes.

This is a CSR Project model targeted to impact students of Government Schools. Krishworks partners with corporates having CSR funds and further collaborates with Government schools to cause an impact on the students of that school. The project involves setting up a digital lab in the school, supplying the required books to the students and also recruiting teachers for this project. This is a strictly monitored system where the objectives are clearly defined and the progress regularly measured. Within a span of few years students move from letter level to story level, they gain confidence and learn to have basic English Communications. Government schools have a lot of students who are 1st generation learners, who lag behind in studies and are very irregular to school; this project is specifically targeted for the overall development of these students. One of the few areas where similar projects are running are Karimpur Girls High School and Rishra Hindi Vidyapith. The project is named after a village named Karimpur in Nadia District of West Bengal, which is a few kilometers from Bangladesh Border.

The Piali-Sonarpur Model

Generating Employment by Creating Entrepreneurs to Teach Students

This is a micro-entrepreneurship model where educated youth gets trained to teach English to local students and earn money in the process. Any educated youth with just graduation as his/her minimum qualification can partner with Krishworks by applying for a Krishworks Hi-Tech English Franchisee. After getting trained from Krishworks he can start a Hi-Tech English Center in his village to teach English to the students of his village and earn money in the process. The center can be started in the premises of his/her home, tuition center, coaching, computer center or by renting school buildings once the schools operations are over (which are normally till 12:00PM for primary schools). The entrepreneur runs the classes in batches at multiple times of the day; he attracts the students by means of regular campaigns using banners, leaflets, posters and by using auto. Regular community engagement functions are organised in his/her center to showcase the performance of the students and to attract further candidates. The project is named after 2 villages of the South 24 Parganas District of West Bengal namely Piali and Sonarpur.

নেতাজীর স্মরণে ইংরাজীতে নাটক করলো ছাত্র/ছাত্রীরা

By Team SLATO & Team Krishworks

Case Study: Parents Meet at Karimpur School – Project “Learn to Read”

By Krishworks Technology and Research Labs Pvt Ltd

Objective

Awareness Program

Workshop for the Parents

Demonstration by the Students

The Feedback Session

Speech by the Teachers of Learn To Read Project

Speech on Behalf of Learn <to> Read Project, Indus Net Foundation, and Krishworks

Distribution of Awards

Conclusion – Felicitation of Teachers

Project Learn To Read by Krishworks Technology and Indusnet Foundation in Collaboration with Karimpur Girls High School

Project Learn To Read was Launched with this Very Dream

The Recruitment

The Evaluation

The Teacher Training

Starting off with the Classes

Managing the System

Krishworks Hi-Tech English Activity Classes: Create a healthy learning circle for teachers

The Unconventional Way

What have we learnt and observed

What are we doing

What is the impact so far ?

Class Performance: Assessment

Going forward :

The Socio-Economic Model

Tehatta-2 Model

Uplifting the Underprivileged Students of Rural India Through Tech Based English Activity Classes.

The Karimpur Model

Literacy Program Through Tech Enabled English Learning Entertainment and Activity Classes.

The Piali-Sonarpur Model

Generating Employment by Creating Entrepreneurs to Teach Students

Hi-Tech English Playground

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