There is something that the teachers of the Suguna RIP V School do before starting to teach a new chapter.
They go to the Information Research and Development Source Centre to develop an audio-visual presentation of the chapter to be taught.
This usually happens a month prior to the start of the chapter, says Suguna Lakshmi Narayanasamy, president of the school.
“All the 60 teachers are trained in developing audio-visual presentation. They collaborate with the software developer at the centre, who looks for relevant materials on the web. Thereafter the teachers say how the information is to be sequenced and the software developer does accordingly,” she explains.
The teachers' voice is also recorded, which is played along with the presentation on the classroom television. Antony Raj, Principal, says all that the teachers have to do is to sit in front of the computer in the classroom and play the audio-visual presentation, which gets displayed simultaneously on the TV screen. “Teachers of all grades do it, but purely to complement the teaching process. It is not a substitute,” he explains. The school introduced the new method towards the end of the 2009-10 academic year and fully used in the last academic year. “It started with the establishment of the centre at the school,” says Ms. Suguna.
“The school bought a software package but soon found it was too generalised and that specific information were needed. That is when the management decided to go in for a centre to develop its in-house resource material,” she says.
“This is an exercise for the teachers as well,” she adds. Such an exercise will bring out their creativity, says Daya Unni, Head Mistress and in-charge of the junior section.
Complimenting what Mr. Raj says, she reiterates that teachers have been advised to use the presentation after they start teaching a chapter and not before it.
This is because the presentation is a supplementary material intended to better students' understanding.
Apart from teachers, the school students have also used the presentation. After they went on a picnic to north India a few months ago, the students prepared a presentation with the pictures they clicked, Ms. Suguna says. B. Vanmathy, computer science teacher of the school, says the approach helps children relate to the subject easily and understand concepts better.
