Happy 2010!

DElight wishes all its readers - students and teachers of the DE schools, AIF team, the donors and well wishers of the program a very happy and prosperous year ahead!

Have fun and take care. Keep blogging....

Orissa CM inaugurates computer lab

Secondary Board High School had all reasons to be happy, for it recently celebrated its Golden Jubilee between 22nd and 24th Dec 09. What's more, Shri. Naveen Patnaik, Hon'ble Chief Minister of Orissa himself participated in the event to inaugurate the lab.

There are two state-of-the-art air conditioned computer labs with 25 computers in each and with all arrangements for LCD projectors for each of the rooms. Apart from this there is an air conditioned audio visual room with arrangements for a LCD projector, where teachers will be taking classes.

Given the expertise of AIF team, Hon'ble Minister School and Mass Education had requested AIF to give a final approval as far as the lay out of the computer lab and the audio visual room were concerned which included everything from the arrangement of computers to electrical fittings. Selected members of the DE team participated in this exercise and oversaw the setting up of the lab. Additionally, AIF also assisted in making a presentation about the school on the insistence of the minister and has been requested by the Govt team to do training in the school based on the DE model. This will be rolled out shortly.

Shri Pratap Jena - Hon'ble Minister School and Mass Education, Shri Prafula Chandra Ghadei - Hon'ble Minister Finance and Excise, were some of the other dignitaries present.

DE facilitator wins BEST ICT Coordinator

Roopashree Panda, DE Facilitator, Gadadar High School, Puri won the Best ICT coordinator in Orissa. The felicitation was part of the two day workshop on the "Connecting Classroom Program", conducted by the British Council on the 6th and 7th of Nov, in Bhubaneshwar. Since the event attracted a lot of media coverage and since AIF was involved with the organization and coordination of the event right from the beginning, AIF's mention was made several times. The fact that Roopashree belonged to a DE school only added to this.

As part of this workshop, various photo essays were made and the best ones were presented during the valedictory function, chaired by the Hon'ble Minister for School and Mass Education and presided over by the Principal Secretary, Vandana Kumari. It is heartening to note that as part of her address, Ms.Vandana Kumari mentioned that she first came to know of a "photo essay" concept only from AIF and was very impressed to see some of those made by students, during one of her meetings with the Orissa team. The fact that students are now in a position to make photo essays is a big development for Orissa's ICT program and DE program, in particular.

The workshop was almost like a DE ceremony since more than 50% of the participating schools were DE schools. Finally, 16 schools from out of this list will be chosen and divided into two clusters to work on an inter-cultural dialogue with their assigned respective clusters in UK. The program involves travel/exchange visits funded by the British Council & a selected group of people may get an opportunity to visit partner schools during next year as part of the pre-c

Workshops in Orissa

One of the teachers presenting during the demonstration workshop

Orissa DE team has been a host of several workshops this month and some of these have resulted in strategic recognition for the program.

DE demonstration workshop concluded recently in Bhubaneshwar with the objective of showcasing creative lesson designs developed by DE teachers. Ten teachers from within Bhubhaneshwar participated in this workshop and presented about the way they have been implementing the program along with some examples of projects and other materials prepared as part of the DE program. The workshop was also well attended by officials from the Govt education department like Vandana Kumari Jena - Principal Secretary for School and Mass Education, Prof. Dr. Sevak Tripathy - Director TE & SCERT, Dharanidhar Nath - Director Secondary Education, and others. As part of the workshop, DE Contest 2008 winners took away their prizes from the Principal Secretary. A presentation was made by the students from one of the winning teams.

On a different note, a one day workshop on effective use of computers in teaching mathematics and science, was held in Kendrapada Govt. High school on the 19th of September 09. The intention of this workshop was to show the teachers and head masters from DE schools about how computers can be used effectively in classrooms. As many as 50 teachers and school heads attended this workshop.

Kishore Mohanty, Science Expert, Board of Secondary Education - Orissa, made a presentation on the concept of "CELLS" from the Science syllabus and two teachers from Kendrapada district presented on "ELECTRICITY" lesson. These presentations were followed by discussions on how these projects were made and how these helped in enhancing the existing learning skills in the schools. Other people present in the workshop included the circle inspector of kendrapada schoools and the State Team leader of DE program, Orissa.

Students recieving the award from Ms. Vandana Kumari

Water filter donations by AMAT

Thanks to this fantastic effort and interest by Applied Materials (AMAT) more than 5,000 students from the Govt High Schools in Bangalore will benefit from drinking pure water in their schools during the school hours.

16 Govt High Schools, where DE program is supported AMAT, have been donated with two such bio sand water filters each and this initiative was formally launched at Govt PU College Domlur, Bangalore on 6th November by Dr.Madhusudan Atre, President Applied Materials India and by Mr. Lalith Prasad, State Team Leader, DE Karnataka. They both emphasised on the importance of availability of clean drinking water in the school and how such healthy practices could lead to a better learning experience.


A typical bio sand water filter doesn't need electricity or use of chemicals and functions on a simple mechanism with very low maintenance. In short, it's the most ideal for a schooling system. Based on the learning from these 16 schools, the effort might be expanded or modified further to suit the needs.

Model Digital story from Orissa

During the recently concluded refresher workshop of the Digital Story Telling (DST) initiative, the Orissa coordinators, Bharathi, Chinmay, Manoranjan and Shantanu, teamed up to make a photo essay. Here's the splendid final product they came up with.

http://www.box.net/shared/7bfrs234qn

The refresher was aimed at reinforcing the basic ideas of the project and help coordinators view more samples of well-made photo essays. So, as a process the coordinators were broken into groups and one of the groups made a photo essay on the life of fishermen, since the workshop venue was right alongside the Gopalpur beach!

NGO Awareness Mela@Dell Campus

‘NGO Awareness Mela @ Dell Campus’ was celebrated on the 7th Sep 2009 in Hyderabad. The month of September is marked as the ‘Global Community Initiative Month’ (GCIM). The idea is to get to know more about the NGOs and also reach out to the under priveleged.

This time the mela was aimed at introducing AIF and its work to the Dell employees. A section in the Dell campus cafeteria was made available and with a very casual ambience, the employees poured in batches and gave an overwhemling response.

Mr. Rajiv Kapoor, Local Dell Champion also joined with the other senior managers and reiterated that this was just an attempt to get the employees to be more aware and that they would have further discussions around how to take the volunteer work forward.