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.

Best Digital Story by Narinder Singh

Digital Story Telling is the newest thing happening in DE program. All the state team coordinators have undergone training in this initiative and now it's time to showcase some of their works.

Punjab was one of the first states to undergo this training and from out of the wonderful projects made by the coordinators during the first round, Narinder Singh's photo essay on Old Age was selected the best project so far.

The film talks about how aged people are not taken care of properly by their children and in spite of all the invaluable sacrifices made towards their children, eventually they're left without any resort! The film contains perfectly adequate and nicely written captions as its support and the soulful music in the background adds the emotion that engages the viewer in a gripping attention to every single detail!

A big congratulations to Narinder. The blog will further feature many more such projects here.

Bal Mela in Govt High School, Doddanekkundi

Students at the Mela

Govt High School, Doddanekkundi hosted its first ever Bal Mela in Bangalore (the second one in the city within one year) on 12th Sep. This Bal Mela was sponsored by AMD and jointly organized by AIF and the High School.

The Mela started at 10 AM with most of the stalls focusing on Science concepts. The stalls ranged from the topics of heart and respiratory system, to statistics, newton's laws, sports equipments, computer stall and even a tattoo stall. Students and teachers from three other neighboring schools were also invited to take part and learn from the Mela. More than 400 people were present at the Mela and they expressed great joy over such an invitation and also that they learnt significantly from the mela. Strikingly attractive were the stalls on Chipko movement (which was a drive against deforestation) and the crafts stall that included many items hand-made by the students! The mela concluded with a short but entertaining magic show for the kids.

Kudos to all the AMD employee volunteers who tirelessly worked since the past two months towards making the Mela a success that it was and to all the teachers and students of the school for hosting and organizing the mela without any downsides ever!

AMD Employee Volunteers