Today’s children are called digital natives as they are born and brought up in an environment surrounded by mobile phones, tablets and laptops. They learn by watching videos on Youtube, enjoy audio-visual communication modes and have limited attention spans. Teaching this generation is a challenge and requires new innovative methods. And it is for this reason that integration of technology in the classroom has gradually become inevitable.
These changes in the lifestyle of the current generation of children became evident right from 2005, when Internet was becoming more accessible to people, and mobile phones became cheaper. Yet, not many would have imagined the kind of integration that Technology would see in day-to-day lives in just over a decade. But, a visionary of St. Paul’s – Fr. Roland envisioned much of it, and began adapting to the changes right from the beginning.
A New Era In Teaching at St. Paul’s
St. Paul’s has always had a strong vision of improving the teaching-learning experience in the schools. Equipped with this powerful vision, and keeping in mind the learning styles of the new-age learners, the management has always strived to implement new ways to improvise the education system.
Back in the year 2013, the management of St. Paul’s decided to integrate Technology with teaching, and a few ideas came up during the ensuing brainstorming sessions. Fr. Roland Coelho SJ, the then Principal, along with Mr. V N Parvatikar, the then Headmaster, made a detailed study and investigation on the functioning of Smart Classes at that time; and soon St. Paul’s beacame the the first institution in the entire region to adopt Smart Classes.
The Smart Classes were initially introduced for the High School Section, and then gradually implemented for the Primary and Sunbeam as well.
What is Smart Class?
Smartclass is a technology platform designed by a “Ebix Inc,” that focusses on understanding the present and future education barriers and evolving innovative solutions to address them. It creates a holistic technology-enabled teaching and learning environment, to make learning an engaging and interesting process.
At the core of smartclass is a vast repository of digital rich-media content across grades K-12, mapped to meet the specific objectives laid out by the central and state boards across the country. The content is available across 12 boards and 5 regional languages (Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil and Kannada) in addition to English. The content offers comprehensive coverage and is mapped to chapters/topics of books prescribed for CBSE board in subjects such as Math, EVS, Science, Social Science, Commerce and Arts.
The multimedia content repository engages students by bringing abstract concepts to life, and helping them practice using exercises, sample papers and interactivities/simulations. Students can reinforce learning using summary resources such as topic synopses and concept maps. Teachers can evaluate students on the concepts taught using objective and subjective tests. Bright students can also explore the topics further using resources such as weblinks, real life applications, and assessment for learning.
Highlights of Smartclass
- Video Lessons – These are rich-media 2D-/3D-animated videos that make it easy for students to visualize all the tough concepts in the curriculum and help bring abstract concepts to life.
- Lab Experiments – These are real-time videos of lab experiments and activities in Science and Math for grades 6-10 and provide a virtual lab experience in the classroom.
- Diagram Makers – These are animated videos that provide step-by-step instructions to draw a diagram of relevant topics for Science and Geography across grades 6-12.
- Topic Synopsis – These provide a summary of the chapter/ topic and act as a ready reckoner for the students to revise concepts.
- Objective Tests – These are multiple-choice chapter-level tests mapped to various boards and provide instant feedback to students.
- Weblinks – These include a library of relevant web resources for every chapter.
- Worksheets – These are printable exercises mapping to chapter-topics that help students practice the concepts learned.
- Board Questions – These are solved past year board papers for grades 10 and 12.
- Sample Papers – These include solved sample papers in all subjects for various grades.
- Home Assignments – These are printable question sets that can be used as home assignments.
- Textbook Solutions – This type of content provides solutions of all the exercises of the textbook.
- Numerical – Numerical are available for Grades 9-12 Chemistry and Physics. Using these numerical, students can practice the application of learnt concepts.
Smartclass Coordenator
Muhammed Asif Iqbal M Patel