shastralay – vai

last weekend (7-8 nov.2009) i visited the experimental school – shastralay located in vai (satara district). a visit which i was looking forward to (see my earlier post). i clubbed my trip with prof. h.c.pradhan who was visiting the school in connection with a meeting. he is on the academic advisory board of the school. we started at 6:00 am from hbcse and reached vai at about 10:30 am. the school is called shastralay.

the shastralay, funded by the kirloskars, is being run by ramesh panse, who has also been involved in setting up the gram mangal in aine. there were other people from various organisations, teachers of shastralay gathered for the meeting. before the meeting could begin, prachi natu took all of us on a tour of each subject lab to show and explain about the setup, teaching methods, students’ activities, etc. at this stage the school is upto 5th std.

after about an hour long tour of each labs, the meeting commenced. panse explained the working principles behind the school, their approach towards learning by doing science, reflection on the initial stages of setup, and planning for further developments. h.c.pradhan gave very valuable suggestions towards shaping up and enhancing the experimental school from pedagogical point of view.

then we had a fantastic lunch break. the lunch was typical of the region–bajara bhakri topped with loni, gajarachi koshimbir, thecha, karlyachi chatni, bhaji, dahi. although the bhaji was spicy, we all enjoyed and were content with the lunch.

the post lunch session was continuation of the meeting, where the teachers shared their experiences and was more of an interactive sessions. i also shared my inputs which have been received positively.

my experiences — personally it was very exciting visit about getting to know about shastralay. i wanted to get a glimpse about what happens at the grassroot level when it comes to education and how it is being practically implemented.

overall it was a very enriching experience for me and travelling on a field trip was fun.

experimental school

it began with a discussion over the breakfast table. prerna walimbe and myself were just sharing about our work and interests. prerna from gram mangal mentioned me about the shashtralay, an experimental school in vai, satara district, where they emphasize on learning by doing. infrastructure is developed and they are hunting for people with content expertise. the school is developing subject labs for learning sciences. i found it interesting, and i mentioned that a few years back i visited an experimental school in aine – gram mangal, which is also developed on similar principles. prerna mentioned that they are following on it, and she insisted that i should pay a visit to know more. i was very much interested and was curious to observe such school.

looking forward to visit vai on 7th nov. 2009.

Khoj 2008 – Gurgaon

Like last year, I was invited to be a judge for the International School Competition on Science Projects in DAV Public School at Gurgaon. The projects dealt on issues of Global warming, Future Energy Sources, IT, Clean and Green City, etc. Overall the students were very enthusiastic about their models but when it came to conceptual understanding the students were found to be not so competent.

Later on the second day, I was one of the panel members for the discussion on the topic of Science Education – A Challenge. This was held for the teachers. The other members of the panel were from IITD, NCL, BARC. The panel discussed on how the teachers can help the students to generate an interest towards science, about classroom learning, conceptual understanding, relating their learning with their daily experiences, etc.

at barcelona, spain

The SELF team of Mumbai — Nagarjuna, Meena, Bipin and Rajiv are in Barcelona for the SELF workshop, FKFT conference. Barcelona is beautiful, we had a very pretty panoramic view of its port on our way to landing. We have been exploring the city by metro, bus, walk. The places that we been so far are— La Rambla del Ravel, St. Rafel, Av. Paral.lel, Poeta Catalunya, Glories.

It may seem to me a shock. On the first evening we were on the La Rambla and I just happened to look at my watch which showed 7:30 pm. Oh but it was pretty bright at this hour of the day. I could not believe that my watch was showing the right time. I thought it must be 6:30 pm with so much of light. It is summer up here to lil bit north of India. As we were talking walk on the streets for an hour or so till 8:30 pm and it was still bright.

Rila mountain, cave, monastery @ Bulgaria

Vow! what an exciting day, it was. We the SELFish people had our day out at the Rila Mountain, Cave and the monastery in Bulgaria. For me, the most adventurous activity of the day was the trek on a snow-packed mountains, oohh.. I climbed the 1300 mts Rila mountain with the help of Julia and descented with the help of David J. Without their help, I would not have made it. Thanx Julia and DavidJ and yes also thanx Wouter and Hinde The album can be viewed from here. Below, are  a few pics of me climbing the Rila mountain, getting out of the cave, at the monastery, and yes the group who helped me in the mountain.

in sofia, bulgaria

I am in Sofia, Bulgaria to participate in the SELF Board meeting from 5-15 Feb 2008. The weather is very cold. It may range from -5 to 5 deg celcius. This is my first time to experience such freezing cold. Well I am also equipped with lotsa warm clothings and our host has also given me extra clothings. shall upload the pics of my trip here. but this is me in front of the hotel.

and this is just a glimpse of one of the streets near the hotel in sofia

back in India

I am back home after a month long international visits. I am really very happy about my visits.

Collection of Photos of my international visits

Apart from visiting the UNCW, IHMC, I also visited some interesting places such as: Cape Fear River at Wilmington, USS North Carolina Battleship, The Centre for Marine Science of UNCW, Peir at Wrightsville Beach near the Atlantic Ocean, Public Schools in Pender County, The Gulf of Mexico, Carribean Island, etc. Vow it was real fun

Me @ Pender County School

Me with students

Wrightsville Beach at Wilmington

USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial

 

IHMC – Florida, USA

I was invited at the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) at Florida by the organizers of the CMC2006 conference. I am really excited about this visit.

Since our paper in the conference dealt with introducing the refinements in the traditional concept mapping method, the researchers at the IHMC invited me to Pensacola, Florida for 3 days to have an interaction on this research area. We at IHMC discussed about concept mapping, the concept mapping ontology editor (developed by IHMC), semantic standards, knowledge organization, novice-expert’s profile of knowledge, etc. I had discussions with Robert Hoffman, Pat Hayes, Alberto Canas, Tom Eskridge and others at IHMC.

I delivered a seminar on the topic of “A Proposal to Refine Concept Mapping for Effective Science Learning” which was scheduled during my visit to IHMC at Florida.

Florida

 

Pensacola Beach

Me @ IHMC

 

Photos:

Pensacola Beach

Dinner with Pat Hayes and Jackie

Me @ IHMC

Florida

CMC 2006, Costa Rica

I am in Costa Rica to attend the Second International Conference on Concept Mapping from Sept 4-7, 2006.

Conference Website: http://cmc.ihmc.us

I am also presenting a paper, co-authored by Nagarjuna, on “A Proposal to Refine Concept Mapping for Effective Science Learning“.

Our paper points out some criticisms of the traditional concept mapping technique. Though we agree with the claim that concept maps are useful in eliciting knowledge, meaningful learning, etc. we think that the effectiveness of the concept mapping method will increase if we introduce certain discipline/refinements for constructing the maps.

Concept maps are a two-dimensional representation of knowledge of a domain. Basically these are node-link diagrams and are being used for past three decades. However, as the new international standards for semantic web are being developed, the concept mapping community has seen the relevance of implementing the semantic standards into the existing concept mapping strategy. It was found that quite a number of participants in the conference touched upon the issue of formalizing the concept maps including our research paper which proposed some refinements in the existing concept maps.

As our paper proposed some refinements which is a serious issue in the concept mapping community, the organizers of the conference invited me to visit their institute in Florida, USA to further the discussion on the research work and for a possible collaboration at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (http://ihmc.us).

My paper was scheduled on the first day of the conference. The good thing about this is that as I have completed my presentation now I can relax and attend the other sessions.

Some of the people with whom I had intereting discussions were Joseph Novak, Alberto Canas, Robert Hoffman, Pat Hayes, John Coffey, Alfredo Tifi, Trish Stoddart, Tanja Kellerman, Jane Heinz-Fry, Richard Iuli, Sumitra Himangshu, Gaurav Goyal, Matthew Lange, Martin Cleaver, Andrea, Amy, Mauri Alhberg and others.

I was staying in a very economical and yet beautiful youth hostel called Gaudys Backpackers. A good coincidence was that some of the conference participants were already staying in this youth hostel and some joined us later. So we had good company and we enjoyed our stay. At the end of the conference which was free for touring, we explored some of the beatiful places in this carribean island. Costa Rica is really very beautiful.

Collection of Photos of the conference at Costa Rica

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visiting Scholar at UNCW, USA

I have been invited as a Visiting Scholar by Prof. Joel Mintzes a Professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (USA) for one month. I am really excited to visit and discuss my PhD proposal with Prof who is one of the pioneers of the research on concept maps in science education.

We have been discussing on various issues related to the effectiveness of the refined concept mapping technique over the traditional concept mapping technique.

Me @ UNCW

Cornerstone Hall

Joel Mintzes & Me