Making Facebook and Twitter profiles is almost norm now but the Kannur district administration thought different. Why not make Science classrooms on these sites?
And thus was born #KannurClassroom. The initiative aims to make learning a lot more easier and exciting for school students. Started a month ago, it involves use of social networks including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others to present science topics found in school textbooks with the help of visual content explained in Malayalam.
If the number of viewers of the videos uploaded so far is an indicator, the idea is being taken well by school students. So far, five videos have been created and uploaded on YouTube and shared in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
As it was the SSLC examination season, all the five videos were especially for Class X students. The videos were on biology topics – thyroid, pancreas, immunity, DNA and blood groups. Sharing them on his official Facebook page, District Collector Mir Mohammed Ali said they would help SSLC students across the State.
“Over the past few months, I have interacted with students from Children’s Home in the district and also with children from tribal areas,” Mr. Ali said on his official Twitter handle on the origin of the idea of making videos to supplement textbooks. Their ability to read and understand English is at best at the beginner-level, and hence the idea to use Malayalam as the language in the videos.
Mr. Mohammed Ali said he had called on medical college students here to make video on any topic from the biology syllabus. His call drew response from a student of the Kannur Medical College who was then assisted by her friends. A video on kidney was made and shown to the girls at the Children Home in January, and a month later, the Collector and his team asked them questions from the video. “The answers just flowed in from the girls who did not even have the topic in their syllabus as it was a Class IX topic,” Mr. Ali said.
Based on this experience, he put a shout-out on the Facebook requesting assistance especially in designing and thus a designer offered his service, he said. And the result is slowly making history.
