Reflecting on a milestone crossed

The journey changes its course...

My journey in this IB World has been a tremendous learning experience for each every day.As the course of life goes on I had to leave OIS and return back to my previous school Choithram International. I am one of those fortunate teachers who has had the opportunity to be mentored by some of the finest people in this world and the IB industry. As I switch over from OIS to CI the thoughts that kept striking me ,are, that I am just shifting from one learning ground to another one, each milestone adding up so much to my existence as a better human being and understanding others. Moreover I never feel the loss in connectivity as the whole ethos and philosophy of IB just gets carried forward as you move from one IB school to another. 

At this juncture I would like to reflect upon all the good values and characterestics that I have learnt and embedded in my character,after my interactions with the OIS environment.I could actually make a list of them....

1. resilience
2. coherence
3. tolerance
4. appreciation
5. respect

These 5 strong chracterestics have actually been strongly existing in all the corners of OIS. It was a system that introduced me to some of the rigorous academic processes that probably exist very aptly in any of the benchmark schools of IB such as the UWCs. 

At OIS another benchmark set everywhere was the sense of critical thinking.TOK concepts and talking about various global  issues had infiltrated very smoothly even in the middle school students.

Probably there would be many more such reflections that would make me realize much later in life, how my tenure at OIS has moulded me.

As I gear up to work with zeal and enthusiasm at CI , again under a strong mentor and guide the only thing that gets emphasized more with time is that every organisation of IB has its own culture and local flavor and it is very important to identify and accept that.I hope to contribute a lot to this institution and gain immensely in the upcoming days.

How facts develop concepts?

What makes a good monday morning?

Well this was the theme of our monday morning assembly at school, worth being pondered about.

Today my monday morning started by sharing good thoughts as usual on my twitter and facebook profiles, some of which are my own and some shared so generously by the the whole community of my social networkers.

One of the tweets which struck my mind went as follows:

Ryan Campbell @ryandal

Use factual questions to guide students to a conceptual generalisation. Don't tell them generalisation instead draw it from them. #IBDunia13

Well it was a tweet from the Indonesian IB teachers group. I never knew that this thought would be later justified so quickly and so well in our school assembly today. The big questions thrown to us in the monday morning assemble by our Head Teacher were in the form of few facts. They went as follows....

1. Total of about 50 percent of the world population lies in the urban region and by 2030 ,UN projects that it would be raised to 70 percent.What does that mean to Kolkata?
2. In the late 20th century , Shanghai , which today projects an image of "modernisation " as quoted by one of our students, was very much similar to what Kolkata is today.

What did these facts mean to us? Was there a corelation? Did it have a purpose?

These facts stated , actually had a far bigger meaning to the audience as our Head Teacher had started a competition for the students, 90 percent of whom were not born or brought up in Kolkata, to contribute to Kolkata and make it a better place to live. It resonated with the theme "Think globally and act locally".

How well we could use this in our classroom practices...Connecting back to the tweet ..developing conceptual generalisation from factual questions. To what extent do we articulate this approach to generate an inquiry based learninhg?

My learning in the journey of being an IB teacher is just endless where the horizon gets pushed away by each passing day.

A new academic year...

Why do we ask 'Why" ?

What a way it was to start the formal monday morning assemblies at our school in this academic year, with the thought shared by our Head Teacher, why do we ask 'Why'?  The thoughts that he kept infusing last year and which continues this year is actually what works wonders in keeping the monday morning blues at bay and add value to my existence.

Today is World Ozone Day and I had been asked to be a guest speaker for the same during the assembly. What I had prepared to share with the school community members could be so well linked with what I heard in the morning. Our head teacher left us all with an impending thought about discovering our own self, about who we are, to think about the past , present and the future. And probably my speech connected from there itself.

World Ozone Day is celebrated all over the world on 16th of September to mark the success of the Montreal Protocol signed in 1887 for the prevention of depletion of the ozone layer. As my conversation moved around the information that I had collected and collated over the internet, the most interesting facts that I could reveal were the extent to which the targets in reduction of production and consumption of the ozone depleting substances set way back in the late 19th century have been achieved by 2011 to a significant way.

The entire discussion brought 4 important thoughts to light:

1. The importance of identifying crisis and the problems related to that.
2. To have a vision to pull oneself away from the crisis with probable projected scenarios
3. To take collaborative intervention if the crisis has a collective nature
4. Meticulous planning by setting targets and having a proper review and action plan for the same.

Does not this coincide with the way the whole education process is set in our school?

The discussion very fluidly connected to the prior thoughts given by the head teacher.It is all due to the tireless efforts of scientists, technologists, legal advisors, economists and policy makers, of identifying the planet earth as the "SELF". A zeal to look through the crisis of the past planning meticulously and implementing the present , by means of which a far better planet can be handed over to our future generation. Our students got a deep insight into the necessity of a connected and collaborative platform of effective communication between interdisciplinary wings for progress.

Blended Learning Model

Should we shift back to blackboard?

It has been over three months now since I have last blogged. This was probably a retrospective time for me. A time where I was questioning my existing teaching pedagogy, experimenting and still waiting for enough evidences to support my hypothesis for learning in the classroom. Well, would be soon blogging about all the hypothesis, experimentation and the theories behind learning that are developing in my classroom.

Recently between 21st to 23rd March ,2013, the IB Asia Pacific Conference was held at Kuala Lumpur. As usual like the last year , waited this year to follow all the excitement and learning  behind the conversations at the twitter hashtags. By now it is an established and justified fact that twitter has been till now the most influential learning platform for me. Since I am not still in a position where I could deserve a seat at the conference, nevertheless my own learning model proves once again that learning can take place even virtually from miles far away. I guess if it can happen for me, it would also happen for my students.

Thanks to all the twitter addicts and bloggers who generously shared thoughts , resources about the IBAP and also blogged about the same. One such blogger who was present there blogged about his whole learning and experience even before his return flight landed back to Australia. This is referring to Warrick who blogs at https://learningau.wordpress.com/about-2/. A special thanks to him as I came to know about so many important presentations, their content and impact on the IB Community. This is referring to the blog that he has written on Face to face or online learning? The case for blended learning? Reading this triggered an ever existing question in my mind , that is to understand the impact of the use of technology in the classroom, which/what is more important? The content that I teach, how I teach OR how the brain learns the content that I teach.

Reading the blog took me to reading further about Neuroscience and rewiring of the brain, where the book  "The Shallows, What the internet is doing to our brain?" by Nicholas Carr is referred to. The same book was also mentioned during the presentation at IBAP. In this book Carr argues the way Plato once argued that the technology of writing would destroy the art of remembering.

Carr argues that modern neuroscience, which has revealed the "plasticity" of the human brain, shows that our habitual practices can actually change our neuronal structures. The brains of illiterate people, for example, are structurally different from those of people who can read. So if the technology of printing – and its concomitant requirement to learn to read – could shape human brains, then surely it's logical to assume that our addiction to networking technology will do something similar?

In the article several critics, neurobiologists , psychiatrists, futurologists , neuroscientists , writers and novelists give their point of view, which amalgamating leads to a common conclusion that the changing pattern of communication is having a huge impact in shaping how the mind thinks and works. Sometimes this is so apt when I connect it to my own pattern of learning. Concentrating on the newspaper has become so very difficult as I tend to shift to the online versions of newspapers, rss and twitter feeds, flipcards and so on, on my smartphone. Reading e-books is always a better option than the hard copies which I hardly carry anymore. And I agree to the panel in their saying that my brain can respond more to small articles than concentrate on a larger one. Perhaps the wiring of the brain is actually changing. 

Connecting this to the discussion in the session at IBAP....the question under scrutiny was that should we as teachers move to blackboard, the old traditional method of study. This was the discussion by Metty Antony from Canadian International School, who mentioned the importance of development of a blended learning model where there is a remarkable balance between the traditional bricks and mortar system and the online learning. Quoting from Warrick's blog " This presentation will cover the impact of the Internet and its tools on learners, the different approaches and models of Blended learning, how the IB is leaning towards a blended learning environment and practical insights into what makes it work". 

With statistics revealed that by May 2013, 97% of the checking of IB answerscripts are going to happen online and forthcoming MYP batches to have on screen assesments, my belief in this transition period has all the more been confirmed. But I liked the blended learning model and reflecting on my hypothesis that with internet and remote learning the self learning increases, I think I now need to put some boundary conditions too.