The Hindu            17.10.2014   

Municipal schools get smart boards

Krishnagiri Municipality has provided Municipal schools with liquid crystal display (LCD) touch screen smart boards as teaching tools.

To upgrade academic teaching tools, nine schools – including two Urdu schools and seven higher secondary and middle schools – have been provided with smart boards to enhance the classroom learning experience.

When connected to a laptop, the interactive white board, ‘Smart’, becomes a touch-sensitive surface, much like the screen of a smart phone.

Using inbuilt software ‘Active Inspire’, the device enables the teacher to highlight, erase and draw, among other actions, says R.Aravind, Proprietor of Future Era, the Coimbatore-based company that has supplied the Canadian-brand.

‘Smart board’ has a combination of over five lakh inbuilt resources that come as handy teaching tools. The teacher can select and drag a dissected heart, explain the functioning of the left artery or select a map or a historic place, as the case may be, to make the students understand, says Mr.Aravind.

“We have provided similar boards to Corporation schools in Salem. But they require electromagnetic pens. But, Krishnagiri is the first Municipality to have a touch board, making it user-friendly,” says Mr.Aravind.

In schools that have Internet facility, there can be live downloads to aid learning. The total package costs about Rs.1.5 lakh, inclusive of board, projector and installation material.

Sources said that the real challenge is in imparting training to teachers. Future Era has proposed two levels of training – a basic one and an intermediate level one – to explore more tools in the software. The software can recognise handwriting and convert it into text. Any language, including Tamil or Urdu can be used as the teaching medium.

K.C. Thangamuthu, Muncipality chairperson, told The Hindu , “This was the former Chief Minister’s vision, and we have implemented it. We will now train teachers to use the tool.”

The Hindu       09.09.2014  

Corporation may take over schools in added city areas

The civic body has identified 132 schools in added areas such as Sholinganallur, Alandur, Ambattur and Thiruvottiyur, to integrate into its education system.

Following requests from councillors, the Chennai Corporation is likely to pass a resolution for the integration of 80 primary schools, 43 middle schools, eight high schools and a higher secondary school, run for the weaker sections in added areas, under erstwhile local bodies.

As many as 23,000 students in such schools are expected to benefit from welfare measures such as free civil service coaching by the Chennai Corporation school system, formulated by the State government to benefit urban poor.

Over 900 teachers in these schools will also come under the new system. The education department of the Corporation started with 40 primary schools in 1912, and has now developed into a system of 32 higher secondary schools, 36 high schools, one Urdu high school, one Telugu high school, 92 middle schools, 122 primary schools and 30 kindergarten schools, with an overall enrolment of 83,000 students.

“After the take-over, our students too will benefit from the State government’s welfare measures in the city,” said the councillor of an added area. After the closure of 30 Chennai Corporation schools in 2009, the number of schools offering quality education to the poor reduced in the city.

The addition of more schools in the system is expected to improve the quality of English education for poor students.

As many as 23,000 students and 900 teachers are expected to benefit from various welfare measures