Flat Classroom Conference , Mumbai 2012

An amazing experience...........


Day 1 at Flat Classroom Conference ....


The day started with 400 people from all over the world in one auditorium at ASB Mumbai.....I felt like sitting with the whole world. So many people from different parts, irrespective of cultural differences, where all under one roof with a common purpose...."To be the best 21st Century educators,leaders and of course students....". Students and teachers united on a common platform to LEARN.

Next ....at Trident Hotel .....a member of team 9...meeting people from all parts of world for the first time and working together on an Action Project, just wonderful. Seeing students work in groups was even more amazing where they proved that there exists an "Educational Culture" which probably unites them. The strive to understand each other and support the theme "Opening up Education" to the fullest.

Working for 4 hours on a collaborative project we come out with our oral pitch and WOW we then present it to 10 teams of educators from all parts of the world. 2 minutes for each presentation......it was just fire...have a look at the video here....

21st Century Education.....My new form of teaching

Do I have to be on twitter to be a 21st Century Educator? 

Well it is your choice. The kind of learning I have had due to networking on twitter would not have been  possible in any other form. Even if it happened it would have taken ages. But the method of twitter Personal Learning Network (PLN) does come with a big Registration Cost....Your Comittment and Passion to learn.
Now siting in a remote city in India Twitter seems to act as my virtual staff room. "I have to learn so much..........". That is the feeling that I get every day. So many hastags and so many conversations going on with too many resources to catch up. Recently I had been to an Apple Education Leadership Tour.
A two hours hands on work on an Apple Ipad 2 completely changed the way I looked at my learning process and the same that is happening with my students who have such devices in their hands in my class. I made interactive books, edited videos , made my own videos, podcasts and what not. There, I listened to some amazing Apple Distinguished Educators and what goes in their classrooms in their schools. After listening to them when I came back I felt all my Unit Planners should be discarded and I needed to think on all of them again.

The effect of such exposure was evident in my next IB DP Physics class itself which was structured in such a way that it would force my students to think, do and learn on their own with my role being as just showing them the way to the think in the right direction. (maybe as I am still experimenting with my new method of teaching).

I simply designed my lesson plan by making a glog , a Scoop and using an ebook.
The glog was something like this.....(full glog at 


The next day the class had my scoop ....


From resources from Scoop which did not bore them as Powerpoints, I guess...they made their own CCD, in the virtual lab,learnt transfer of charge from a transfer of water in bucket simulation (in scoop). And the results were amazing. I could see and feel the students going through a journey while they were learning Charge Coupled Devices from Digital Technology and that too all on their own. I had to do very little explanation for that. I got energized further by an email from a  student stating"I think you should get more of such glogs...they actually made me question myself over wat we learnt n not jst accept the class blindly!  ". ..Devansh.
So now I feel I have a lot to do to implement all the same content of physics in such a manner where students need to do all the learning and thinking.

All these thoughts of mine got reinforced by a sudden entry in one of the hashtags #21clhk, today in my virtual staff room , twitter.There I stood virtually with all the participants of the 21st Century Learning Conference, sharing all their learning from the keynote speakers of the conference and the amazing resources . Amidst those resources came to know about Education Scientist Sugata Mitra (about whom I had already heard in my Apple Workshop), in details and the influence he had on so many educators.Have a look at this  video......So A New Journey Has Begun Today........Self Organized Education...........

Reflection of SAIBSA 2012

How big is the gap between knowing and being a 21st Century educator?

As I shared in my previous blogs, my journey as an IB educator is taking me through lot of turns where I am fortunately learning a lot and thanks to all the twitter contributors from whom I have been immensely gained a lot. They might have no idea how they have acted as as mentors for a teacher, far of, in one of the cities in India.

This was my second IB DP SAIBSA Job alike Session that I attended along with a Category 2 IB worshop. 340 DP teachers , from different parts of the country all at one place, beautifully and most elegantly hosted by Podar International School, Mumbai.

An amazing introductory Plenary Session by Gillian Ashworth. It was all about Inquiry Based Learning in IB DP. The presentation actually gave me an insight on what actually everyone meant by specifying a 21st Century educator.

After the presentation I seemed to be comforted with the thought that what I had started doing was a first step towards being a 21st Century educator.

But then should it be just "I" or "We"?

This was followed by a whole day session in subject specific room, where we had discussions pertaining to the subject only where the focus was "I do this " and " I  do that", without any directional move towards what our today's students would want "Us to do". I guess we all sitting in the room were sailing in the same boat not having the slightest idea about the changes in the world and methods of teaching.

A very important question kept on sweeping across my mind was " What impact did globalization have on Education in India?". The terms which seemed very common to me were totally unfamiliar to others. Forget about Twitter,Scoop.It., Paper.Li, Diigo, Edmodo, Blogs and Wikis, and anything else that I was using, my co teachers had no idea of a google doc even. 

So how far are we from the reality of what Gillian said in the morning of being a 21st Century Educator?

With my inputs in the sessions about few "technology " tips that I gathered over the past few months, the group seemed to be interested. They were enthralled by me sharing so many resources through DROP BOX and not flash drive. After the session I received lot of thank mails and this urged me to provide them with a collaborative platform. I immediately started a google doc with some problems posted by teachers to me.

 The need of the hour for us educators is  to connect with the vast world of International School educators, especially at twitter and other Social Networking sites. Learn from each other, implement them in our daily teaching and share our practices on a regular basis.

Flat Classroom---being a virtual participant

Well today I am writing this to reflect on why I would like to be a virtual participant in the flat classroom conference to be held at American School of Bombay ASB unplugged , this month. While registering myself ,I have to fill in the reasons for such application in the Virtual Participant Application form. To support this I have to give some websites which would tell more about me. Hence I thought to write a post related to this.


My journey as a teacher started a decade ago, but as a member of the  IB community for the last three years the entire meaning and existence of my profession changed. I realized that teaching was more than just delivering  content from the book. As my new role of being a facilitator the course of my journey changed and at this juncture I can ascertain that I am in a phase of unlearning and trying to understand and become one of many 21st century educators.
Being in India, with the lack of awareness of integration of technology in education (concluded from my observation and interaction of IB teachers of few schools of India with whom I interacted, I soon realized that I have to do a lot of self study and learning  on my own and for that connectivity of mine with the world outside was highly needed.In this venture of mine I have been using wikis, blogs, facebook and twitter as tools to connect.


 In the past few months the use of twitter has really  accelerated this process and now recently I have started publishing my own enewspaper The IB News-Daily.
I felt that if the IB teachers with whom I interact are not on twitter or google+, still with a glimpse of this they can remain updated. I also started circulating this in the network of educators that I had got through twitter, facebook, google+, linkedin and soon saw that people started liking it and my followers on twitter are also increasing. Everyday I do feel the kind of resources and learning I get from others, I should also give back something to the community.

In my school due to the various role profiles that I have to deliver, and with no common platform available for connectivity, I felt a huge need to connect teachers as well as students from my school with themselves and then introduce them to the vast world.outside. Being a TOK teacher I feel that knowledge can be generated only through the interaction of creative and critical thinking. For this the "interaction" was highly needed. I introduced the platform of Edmodo. This helps all of us to stay connected in various groups, resource sharing , maintaining virtual classrooms and professional development. As an MYP PP supervisor I am always connected with the MYP PP supervisors and MYP PP students. Its amazing to see how students even advise each other and come  to some constructive conclusion.

I have also introduced Scoop.it to my students and teachers which is really becoming very popular and helps a lot to be referred back for bibliography in TOK, EE essays and for sharing research work.


As a new TOK Coordinator, I feel all our TOK supervisors and students need to connect and enhance their knowledge by interacting with like minded people throughout the world. In this endeavor of mine I created a TOK page on facebook to connect everyone and share resources and stimulate discussions.

There are many more tools ind interesting stories and experiences which I will share in due course of time. So keep following me @rajashree_basu