Animated illustrations of various science topics, teachers explaining basic science, English and Mathematics concepts though innovative methods, and textbook poems in the form of songs are some of the videos that populate the YouTube channel of the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), Tamil Nadu.
With over 3,400 subscribers, the channel has now begun to give teachers a platform to showcase their talent and has begun to invite others to send in videos for the ‘Teacher Super Singers’ category.
Innovative explainers
“A few years ago, teachers from government schools across the State were trained in basic recording, audio and video editing to enable them to make such videos and contribute towards a comprehensive online repository. In the last one month, the teachers have uploaded several videos ranging from short explainers on textbook concepts and questions to innovative explainers on grammar rules and poems,” said R. Asir Julius, Assistant Professor with the ICT Cell of the SCERT.
Explaining how they were contributing videos, A. Maheswari, a teacher from the Panchayat Union School, Alampalayam, said teachers had been seeking guidance from the SCERT officials as well as choosing topics they thought could be explained in a simple fashion to students. “YouTube has been a good medium for us to reach out to students across the State,” she said.
Teachers like her keep in touch with a team of moderators from the SCERT who manage the online channel. Over 240 teachers have been contributing videos. The SCERT is now encouraging more teachers to contribute and expects around 2,000 videos this academic year, said G. Arivoli, Director of SCERT.
Basic maths concepts
Not restricting themselves to textbook concepts, Rubi Theresa, a teacher from the Tiruchengode government girls higher secondary school, said she was making videos with special techniques to help slow learners familiarise themselves with basic mathematical concepts.
School Education secretary T. Udhayachandran said that the YouTube channel was conceived with the intent of making video and online content in Tamil available to students.
“The department is now coming up with a ‘Learning Management System’ (LMS) where we are developing both e-books and smart books for students. With lessons in the video format, we hope to take assessments digitally in future as well. Building up a repository of videos with regard to academic concepts is one of the steps we are taking towards LMS, which will be implemented in future,” he said.
