7 BASIC COMPETENCY FRAMEWORKS FOR SCHOOLS

1. Core subject competency
2. Technical competency
3. Creative competency
4. Problem solving competency
5. Critical thinking competency
6. People competency
7. Communication competency

Why are these competencies important?

Each competency serves as a part of a jig-saw puzzle.  It does not make a complete picture without solving each and every part.  Any individual is complete only when exposed to all competencies.  Schooling is the best way to promote competencies.  Though the extent of developing of these competencies depends on likes and dislikes, interest in the subject, curiosity in the work provided and passion of the individual.

 21^st century is about different abilities in an individual.  Today, world has become more complicated with ‘routine manual’ jobs being replaced by mechanised robots.  Focus of learning should shift from learning to applying-analysing and relearning.  To develop and expertise students on such a higher-level thinking can be done only through competency-based education. 

How does this look in the global scale?

Focus of schooling is now to develop competencies.  OECD’s Global competency framework focuses on four major attributes.  They are

Source: http://www.oecd.org/education/2030/

The focus of OECD is on larger areas while schooling looks into more finer areas of development like

• Disciplinary knowledge is the base knowledge provided by text books
• Interdisciplinary knowledge for creative thinking and problem solving
• Practical knowledge for critical thinking and technical knowledge
• Cognitive and meta-cognitive skills to develop both creative and critical thinking
• Social and emotional skills to develop Communication and people thinking for a sustainable world.
• Physical and practical skills is the application of practical knowledge towards sustainable development.
• Attitudes and values which include people awareness and communication that are to be built from personal to local then to national and extended to global level

It is an established fact that the focus of schools should be on applying and analysing the read knowledge.  However, in order to design such classes, the focus should clearly lie on the competencies and the mode of approach should be based on the competencies so that outcome-based delivery takes upper hand.

The larger focus of developing such competencies to build communities on strong foundations of health, mutual respect, and self-sustaining.

How can schools develop these competencies?

The interlinking of competencies with the core curriculum is the central idea.  To do so teachers need to build upon curricular experiences rather than curriculum delivery.  Any topic for the learner needs to be encased into capsules which provides the learning a real-life experience. 

Terms like – Involving, engaging, Inquiry, Projects etc., provide a lot of, out of the scope, norms into classrooms.  Such methods allow students to talk, collaborate, interact, understand and analyse experiences.  Such live experiences develop competencies among the learners.  Looking beyond the textbooks and solving daily problems help build a better global citizen.  The crux is to understand that learner needs are different from what they were.  However, the only hitch to the issue is that – Can our teachers' cope up with the change?

TECHNOLOGY : A SUPPLEMENT, NOT A SUBSTITUTE!

‘Digital tools aid a teacher, cannot substitute them,
Digital tools aid a learner, cannot induce learning’

Technology has become part of day-to-day life.  Educational institutions are among the first to race towards adapting the new technology for their students to achieve the best. From apps, games to Learning Management Systems, a variety of options are available for educational institutions to sustain their market. In their race to achieve the most sort after skills, institutions have spent a lot of money in adapting modern technological innovations.  

Have these fetched their ultimate result?

In the buyers’ market, various types of technological support are offered from different organisations – some are free like  ‘Khan Academy’, some on payment mode on tablets like  ‘BYGUs’ or online as in ‘Next education’ etc.,  Confusion is what results from all these options.

Technological innovators in the field of education, promote a lot of theory to endorse the fact that their products optimize learning.  However, science has already proved that learning happens with an active brain and when the learned aspect is more interest driven, personnel based and personal.

Yes! It is ‘Personal’, so we need to include technology, but ‘how?’ and ‘when?’ are the real questions that need to be answered. The problems associated with technology in education in the K12 market are that   

1.      It is filled with a number of learning solutions designed by enthusiastic youngsters, who perceive education from their point of view. 

2.      Some innovators designing these tools have neither teaching experience nor worked as teachers.

3.      The teachers who have immense experience on how and when students learn are mostly ignorant of such tools of technology.

4.      Most of the institutions embrace modern technology without having any focus on when and how it needs to be used for a pivotal outcome.

Suggestion, on the technology used as games helping students to develop interest in a subject has also not derived concrete results.  It has often proved to be a distraction rather than a reinforcement of the learnt topic.  The game designed for learning uses generally – bright colours, attractive features, fascinating characters, etc., which grabs the attention of the students towards the features rather than helping them to focus on the task at hand.

Personal interventions and one-to-one teaching help the learning process to happen.  This is useful when the mentor/guide/teacher is involved and supports the learner by creating suitable environment and curiosity in the topic.  This can happen with or without the support of technology.  The use of technology in this context is to refine the learning.  The understanding and thinking need to be directed towards the topic and that can only happen when the teacher is involved. 

Many educators propose ‘ONLINE EDUCATION’ as the future of education which is available through various Learning management systems/software.  The course setting starts with

·         design, then

·         setting of sub units, then

·         adding video/image references, then

·         setting assignments, then

·         check points, then

·         relating submissions, and

·         Performance related graphs for self-analysis.

‘Learning happens anywhere and everywhere’.  

MOOCs are only limited to Colleges/Universities or adult learning. MOOCs were not able to substitute classroom teaching. WHY?  The only answer could be young learners’ and beginners need more of human touch and feel for learning to happen.  They cannot understand the machine talking to them and making them understand.  Yes! There is a pause and redo button, but what happens if they do not understand the way the topic is taught?  This is also true in the case of colleges/universities or adult learning happening through MOOCs.

PISA performance analysis has shown that countries which dominate learning through technology are not the most performing.  It only reiterates the aspect that technology can only be a supplement and not a substitute.

‘Digital literacy’ has become a part of 21^st century skill. Knowledge of all sorts can be obtained at the click of a mouse.  Converting knowledge to understanding for application and further analysis can be sorted only when the thinking process is initiated.  Thinking can only happen when faced with the right question.  The question which kindles thought process changes from person to person.  A machine can show images or words or videos of thoughts and ideas, but to ignite the viewer’s interest and convert that to a passion – is the work of a mentor.  Mentors can be sometimes be our parents, friends, teachers or personalities but never a machine.  

Human made innovations are to aid not to mentor mankind.

Ref:

1.      http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34174796

2.      https://brightfutures4me.wordpress.com/2012/05/13/does-technology-improve-learning-no/

10 SIMPLE THOUGHTS FOR THINKROOMS

THINK THOUGHTS

Critical thinking is an essential 21st century skill.  To develop them in classrooms, following are some simple thoughts

Prompts: 

Provide pictures or statements and ask students to describe the situations or promote story telling

Cartoons:

Political, Satirical cartoons provide immense insight and thought development.

Abstract:

Abstract thinking gives connection and correlation between disciplines and art.  Giving artistic pieces and allowing description builds this type of thinking.

Connectors:

This helps in building concept and grammar interaction between languages and subjects.  Provide key words and inform students to build connecting sentences or passages.

Puzzles and Riddles:

The earliest and most common way of developing analytical and logical thinking.

Interviews:

Bring in a famous personality or role play a famous personality and set an interview with them in classrooms.  Allow students to do basic research and interact with the guest.

Debate:

On the spot or prepared debates gives more insight to arguments which promote thinking.

My feet your shoe:

Putting one in  others shoe and thinking about both situations and emotions.  This helps in building social responsibility and empathy.

Reporting:

Sports commentary or school event commentary, incident or news reporting can be promoted to develop spontaneous thinking among students 

5 WAYS TO USE EXCEL FOR SCHOOL MATHEMATICS

Dyscalculia is one of the common disorders observed in understanding and working with numbers.  Learners not only need to understand the core principles of mathematics as a subject but learn manipulations of the numbers and their operations to tune it to their benefit.

Excel is the simplest tool which can be used in school mathematics to understand the number manipulations

The basic format of excel incorporates some special features as given in the images below

Common use of excel sheet used in classrooms can be

1. Number systems – Set numbers in ascending (A to Z) or descending (Z to A), sort, filter compare etc.,
2. Basic operations and calculations – Understanding how operations works on various number system like – Integers, fractions, decimals etc., can be studied using excel sheets
3. Statistics – Finding out mean, median mode, deviations, variance is part of data analysis and the best tool which suits the purpose is excel
4. Graphs and Charts – Learning about various representations of data is essential, what best feature than use excel and manipulate data to see how the graph changes
5. Trigonometry – Best way to understand the angles and length variation in triangles is the use trigonometry in excel.

10 CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS

External factors affecting listening

Listening is a complex process affected by both external and internal factors.  Internal is mostly related to body functions and external to the speaker and the topic concerned.

Internal factors affecting listening

Listening is an important skill that needs to be developed among students to have a positive life.  How can this be developed?
Here is the list of 10 activities that can be implemented to improve listening.

List of classroom activities to improve listening

The activities are

1. Observational videos:  Commentary or incident based videos to understand words and actions depicted in the video.  News videos are more suited for this purpose.
2. Questions on reading: Allow students to read passages and ask and allow questions, cross questions on the read passage.
3. Conversational comprehensions: Listen to comprehensions and deduce various aspects of the context, character analysis, moods and emotions based on comprehensions.
4. Audio clips: Listen to audio clips, analyse the situation and answer questions based on them
5. Craft - Listen and Do: Listen to craft preparation steps, follow the procedure and process to make the product
6. Key points Summary:  Listen to the entire content and list down summary as points of understanding
7. Extend or oppose: Provide a topic, ask a student to talk for, abruptly stop and ask another student to oppose on the point of discussion
8. Guess the context: Mute the audio, allow students to observe the image and ask the students to guess the topic of discussion or talk. Then give the audio and allow the students to self analyse their guess
9. Sketch or Map: Listen to the complete talk - sketch or map out the topic along with the flow of presentation - Ted talks can be best used for this activity
10. Contextual word synonym or antonym: Provide word synonym or antonyms and ask student to pick out the related words in the audio.

How digital are you?

http://make-it-digital-quiz.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/quiz/57e8f7432faece001787f125/play

SHIFTS IN TODAY'S LEARNING

Intricacies of Instructional design

Instructional design needs clarity in the way it is designed.  The designer should observe the complete picture prior to their proposal.  An outline for such design is shown above.

CHILDREN WITH MOBILES – THE GOOD AND THE BAD

The world and its vivid colors have always attracted the human eye.

Mobiles have not only connected but also shrunk our worlds.  It is impossible to think of our lives without mobiles.  It is more convenient and entertaining to handle mobile phones, for a moment’s distraction from what so ever depressing.  Children are more attracted and find their way to navigate through these mobiles easily.  They are born understanding the change in technology.  Can this be wired into their genetics?

Why are children attracted to mobile phones?

Let us list factors which enables them to feel at ease with mobiles

·         Range of media – Audio and Video

·         Range of colors – Visually appealing

·         Dynamic settings – Curiosity

·         Kindle thought - Challenging

·         Ease of use – Touch screen

Mobile intrigues a child.  The hyperactive brain is sensitive to such fascination, that it clings on to it.   A book may provide a challenge for a few days may be until all the pages are browsed.  But, a mobile will challenge and change every minute and with the plethora of apps available, it makes them more curious.  Gaming environments also create challenges that are quite entertaining for an already inquisitive brain.

The Good: 

The ease of connecting with caretakers considered.  Mobiles work out innocent brains in the frontiers of vocabulary and visual enhancements.  The vivid movements observed in such mobiles require a lot of concentration and observation.  Technically they provide a large scope for understanding environments better.  Games involves flowers, fruits, stations, forts, forests etc., which train them in directions, course of nature and sensitivity in real life. 

The Bad:  

Apart from the concern of damaging their eyes.  Mobiles make children ‘loners’.  They seem to bury themselves in a virtual world.  In today’s world where focus is shifting towards developing social relationships and empathy, mobiles put large brake towards its development.  The large increase in cyber-crime, is also not a respite, needs to be considered while allowing children to browse through the immense internet.  Violence and ghastly images can disturb tender brains. Hurting is painful and it does not provide a visual recognition.  Mobiles are addicting and thus a cause for concern.

The Balance: 

Anorexia and Obesity are two sides of the same coin.  Mobiles have their own advantages and disadvantages.  However, it is the balance that we provide will help children to be their slave or their master.  If you are thinking of stopping them from using mobiles, that is still dangerous as you are not providing them with a scope of exposure to the rapidly growing technology.  Then how to balance this phenomenon.

• Schedule and limit the time for browsing through an independent child account. 
• Strict monitoring of child related websites prior to providing permission. 
• Awareness among its caretakers on various cyber nitty-gritties
• Listen and observe activities among individuals and their group behaviour
• Discussions on major incidents or happenings around the world – allow children to come forward with their perspective.
• Family and School outing
• Team sports

When handled with care and caution, the mobiles and the world become a more congenial atmosphere.  

‘21st Century Learning  produces a sustainable citizen for a sustainable world’.