There is an echo of John Steinback’s The Moon Is Down in Ganapathy Iyer Girls High School’s pandemic experience.
In Steinbeck’s novel, when thrust into a war, a small nation of unarmed, peace-loving people flounder their way to resistance, slowly becoming firm-footed in their mission. Signalling the early stage of the shift from “peace-loving” to “combative”, the pickaxe turns into a weapon of destruction.
In the Gopalapuram school, when thrust into online classes, a clutch of digital-immigrant, textbook-loving teachers bumble their way to digital literacy, slowly becoming comfortable in front of the screen. The first sign of the shift from “bewilderment” to “poise” is a fridge glass tray that morphs into a makeshift stand cum see-through screen.
Before going into the details of the innovation, here is what led up to it.
On June 15, 2020, the headmistress of the school, Saradhamani Subramanian had summoned the teachers for an urgent meeting. No sooner had she broached the topic than she found herself in one lonely corner of the room. The rest of the teachers had broken into two groups, neither of them warming up to Saradhamani's suggestion.
The headmistress had asked them to video-record all the lessons in WhatsApp to be shared with students.
“One set of teachers just opposed the idea, considering it impractical. The other set was bewildered by the very thought of attempting it,” laughs Saradhamani.
But the facts had to be faced: There was no alternative to pre-recording the lessons. A majority of the students from the school — run by the Gopalapuram Educational Society — is from one-smartphone households. The lone smart device would usually be out with the bread-winner of the house. Attending live online classes during the day was out of the question for these students.
A necessity
Pre-recorded video lessons with the easy medium of WhatsApp seemed the perfect solution. Saradhamani knew with cast-iron certainty that it would not just work, but work spectacularly.
The sense of certainty derived from a guinea-pig experiment that had been carried out with evident success.
“I had suggested it to a friend who was a teacher of primary classes in another school. She had acted on it with impressive results.”
When Saradhamani shared a couple of those WhatsApp video-lessons with her colleagues, she noticed a faint glimmer of cooperation.
“When it came to online classes, the teachers themselves had a lot of unanswered questions. I was watching a lot of videos on how to record lessons in WhatsApp.”
That studiousness helped sort out one issue.
“To display the textbooks and the worksheets and drawing sheets for the students, I asked the teachers to use a fridge glass tray. The teacher had to place the tray on at least two sturdy and tall objects of equal height and place the worksheet, textbook or drawing sheet under the tray. The mobile placed on the tray would be tilted to face what lies under it,” explains Saradhamani.
A teacher’s video of a rangoli drawing session traces each line and spotlights every dot, all under the transparent fridge glass tray.
Just as the pickaxe gives way to more sophisticated weaponry in Steinbeck’s tale of resilience and innovation, the fridge tray gives way to Google Drive and Google Classrooms.
Saradhamani states that the teachers learnt fast. And as digital natives, there was no way the students would lag behind.
“The teachers learnt how to use Google Drive to make and share videos; and they also started sharing videos on YouTube. When the unit test had to be conducted for Class X students, the teachers put to use a feature they had discovered in Google Classrooms. The students were at ease using it. Writing their answers, they created pdf files of their answer sheets and shared them with the teachers in no time.”
The subject teachers make video-lessons and share them with the class teacher (classes range from sixth to tenth) who in turn share it with the students. In this time-table, a subject defines an entire day — to give an idea, Monday for science, Tuesday for English and so on, with video-lessons pertaining to a subject being shared on the day marked for it.
Looking back, the principal cannot but marvel at the journey from videos overlaid with ‘woof-woofs’ and ‘meows’ to videos with hardly any hint of ambient noise.
“The freedom extended to us by our school correspondent Dr. Nirmala Subramanian, a plastic surgeon, has helped us innovate along the way as we go about achieving our objectives.”
The Rotary Club of Madras Temple City is now driving a digital literacy programme for the students. Says Saradhamani, “The Club conducted a hepatitis awareness session online for the students. One hundred and twenty students participated, and I was impressed with how poised they were online, how well they managed the lighting. There are children who live in modest homes, even huts, but they did not mind the fact as they showed the settings in the call.”
