Summer School

I was participating at the Summer School on “Methodology of Task Design: How to Construct Exercises for Learning” at the Technische University, Dresden, Germany, Sept 2014. It was my first time participating at a summer school. It was really a good experience, as it was more of discussion on the research area. As the summer school is specifically on an area, it is useful to participate as most of the participants are from a common area of research, unlike a conference. I presented poster on “A Proposal to Extend Concept Mapping to Concept Lattices for Representing Biology“.

Although it was a summer school, it was quite cold in Dresden. As part of social event, we visited the Bastei, night tour of city of Dresden. After the summer school, I visited Berlin, Prague (Czech Republic).

 

introducing rigor in concept maps

i have been working in the area of refined concept maps for science education. so far we have communicated our research in conferences on science education, concept mapping, etc.

recently, our work got published in Springer’s LNAI  book.  the paper ‘introducing rigor in concept maps’ was presented in the 18th international conference on conceptual structures 2010 at kuching, malaysia. the paper talks about applying rigor by focusing on relation names, the re-representation of sentences to propositions in RDF triples format, and how the refined concept mapping methodology can act as a bridge between informal and formal models of knowledge bases.

Meena Kharatmal & Nagarjuna G.: Introducing rigor in concept maps. In M. Croitoru, S. Ferre, and D. Lukose (Eds.), ICCS 2010, LNAI 6208, pp. 199-202, Springer Verlag 2010.

I acknowledge:

• HBCSE for providing with funding support for the conference

• ICCS 2010 for providing sponsorship for tutorials and workshops

vishwakosh – vai

I happen to visit the vishwakosh (encyclopedia) office in vai on 7th nov. I was really glad to interact with the people and look at the interesting and resourceful library of classic collection and encyclopedia. It is worth visiting the library. Prof. H.C.Pradhan was discussing with Mr. Chaunde related to the biology encyclopedia.  Since i had some curiousity about it which i have also mentioned in my earlier post related to change in biological terms, I participated in their discusison. Chaunde was showing how they are managing the entries, the usage of sorting cards. The information on the sorting cards display the name of the term and also a related entry with see also. In this way, they are now trying to embedd the terms which are introduced in the textbooks. It seems that the vishwakosh project began about five years ago, the list of entries was decided but the textbook committee have overlooked this project and hence there has been discrepancies in the names of the terms. But even this problem is being handled by the vishwakosh. They are really meticulously taking care of such issues.

Over a cup of coffee, Chaunde shared his experiences about peoples responses to their work. Overall, I was satisfied with this meet, cos my quest of finding the rationale behind the change in the terms was a bit resolved.

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