Interview Of Manoj Singh, Commissioner, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti

 Source: TechAtEdu

Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti was set up in 1985 to provide quality modern education to talented children in the rural India. Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas have been imparting education by integrating information and communication technology in their teaching learning process. Recently many of their teachers and students won awards for innovative use of technology.

In an exclusive interview with TechAtEdu, Manoj Singh, Commissioner, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, talks about how the Samiti has adopted ICT in its teaching-learning process and what are the future plans of the organisation.

How Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti is incorporating ICT in its teaching-learning process?

ICT is major pedagogic inputs as far as technology is concerned in Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya. Basically, on pilot basis, we are trying to disseminate technologies and give exposure to students in different schools of Navodaya Vidyalaya. We are also looking forward to scale up the regional experiences and trying to integrate them in all our 6,000 classrooms in 594 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya in India and we would like to see how we could scale up and integrate ICT in our system.

How technology will be helpful in this?

What has happened in the last five years is that bookish knowledge is being converted into visual knowledge by technology where through audio-visual inputs various learning processes have been simplified. This has been done basically to have the attention span of the student in a concentrated manner on a particular issue so that he can give up wrought learning, as you know in wrought learning there is emphasis on mugging up of the whole thing without understanding and it has been physiologically demonstrated that in wrought learning, after sometime the input goes into memory it perishes and there is no long-term retention; so, there is less recall but in this audio-visual mechanism the learning that takes place goes into long-term memory instead of short term memory and whenever the child is simulated to such situation he immediately remembers and recalls. This is one of the greatest advantages of technology.

Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti was set up in 1985 to provide quality modern education to talented children in the rural India. Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas have been imparting education by integrating information and communication technology in their teaching learning process. Recently many of their teachers and students won awards for innovative use of technology.

In an exclusive interview with TechAtEdu, Manoj Singh, Commissioner, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, talks about how the Samiti has adopted ICT in its teaching-learning process and what are the future plans of the organisation.

How Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti is incorporating ICT in its teaching-learning process?

ICT is major pedagogic inputs as far as technology is concerned in Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya. Basically, on pilot basis, we are trying to disseminate technologies and give exposure to students in different schools of Navodaya Vidyalaya. We are also looking forward to scale up the regional experiences and trying to integrate them in all our 6,000 classrooms in 594 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya in India and we would like to see how we could scale up and integrate ICT in our system.

How technology will be helpful in this?

What has happened in the last five years is that bookish knowledge is being converted into visual knowledge by technology where through audio-visual inputs various learning processes have been simplified. This has been done basically to have the attention span of the student in a concentrated manner on a particular issue so that he can give up wrought learning, as you know in wrought learning there is emphasis on mugging up of the whole thing without understanding and it has been physiologically demonstrated that in wrought learning, after sometime the input goes into memory it perishes and there is no long-term retention; so, there is less recall but in this audio-visual mechanism the learning that takes place goes into long-term memory instead of short term memory and whenever the child is simulated to such situation he immediately remembers and recalls. This is one of the greatest advantages of technology.

What kind of technology are you using, as in what kind of hardware, software?

We have smart boards, multimedia projectors and language labs. There are a number of mechanical contrivances which are coming up and usability of those is being first seen in Navodaya Vidyalayas, whether these technologies are usable and appropriate for Navodayas and whether technologies can be scaled up in these schools.

That means it is on experimental basis?

Yes, on experimental basis, because Navodaya is a dispersed kind of schooling system which is meant for gifted and talented children. We have Navodaya almost in all corners of India, except in Tamil Nadu. Because we are dispersed and in desolate locations we do not have effective means of connectivity; telecommunication infrastructure is lacking. Even now, there are still more than 150 Navodayas where we do not have tele-connectivity or connectivity through VSAT. We are trying to spread this infrastructure to all the Navodayas but that is taking time.

Many of your schools, teachers and students have won award for innovative use of ICT, how do you feel?

There have been individual innovations by teachers; they have put their learning mechanism, their teaching mechanism into an audio-visual input. We have some very good examples in subjects like social sciences where a very good ICT component has been developed in-house. We also have proposal from Google India where they want to have topic wise, class wise and subject wise education content based on CBSE, NCERT pattern in audio-visual format. They want us to provide teachers and learning materials which are taught in our classes and also improvise and integrate all these with relevant materials available on YouTube or other Google sites.

The idea is if we have some standardised format, for example any topic covered in NCERT, you know NCERT books are online so you can go to any topic, any subject of any class and turn the page on computer and whatever is given there is supplemented by audio-visual aid which is available on YouTube and if you integrate them the whole process  becomes very illustrative, so that is the target we are trying to achieve. It will take time but the target is to have a customised format, customised software for Navodaya so that it is based on the CBSE pattern and it helps Navodaya students to learn and achieve higher grade.

As most of the students come from rural background how difficult it is to impart technology enabled education to them?

Look, I don’t foresee any difference because the ambience and atmosphere in Navodaya is as good as any modern school. We give all the facilities, which are available in cities; so, learning atmosphere is not deficit in terms of technology or in terms of quality. Initially, when the students come in sixth standard, there is inhibition because if you see the profile of students of Navodaya 75 per cent come from rural areas and 40 per cent come from those families where parents don’t know how to write. They are the first generation learners; so, there is an inhibition but once that inhibition goes off in 2-3 months the students catch up very fast because they are talented children and their learning process is much faster than an average child. They soon become well conversant with these technologies and start using it. In that sense, I don’t see any impediment in the adoption of technology as far as rural backwardness is  Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti was set up in 1985 to provide quality modern education to talented children in the rural India. Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas have been imparting education by integrating information and communication technology in their teaching learning process. Recently many of their teachers and students won awards for innovative use of technology.

In an exclusive interview with TechAtEdu, Manoj Singh, Commissioner, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, talks about how the Samiti has adopted ICT in its teaching-learning process and what are the future plans of the organisation.

How Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti is incorporating ICT in its teaching-learning process?

ICT is major pedagogic inputs as far as technology is concerned in Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya. Basically, on pilot basis, we are trying to disseminate technologies and give exposure to students in different schools of Navodaya Vidyalaya. We are also looking forward to scale up the regional experiences and trying to integrate them in all our 6,000 classrooms in 594 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya in India and we would like to see how we could scale up and integrate ICT in our system.

How technology will be helpful in this?

What has happened in the last five years is that bookish knowledge is being converted into visual knowledge by technology where through audio-visual inputs various learning processes have been simplified. This has been done basically to have the attention span of the student in a concentrated manner on a particular issue so that he can give up wrought learning, as you know in wrought learning there is emphasis on mugging up of the whole thing without understanding and it has been physiologically demonstrated that in wrought learning, after sometime the input goes into memory it perishes and there is no long-term retention; so, there is less recall but in this audio-visual mechanism the learning that takes place goes into long-term memory instead of short term memory and whenever the child is simulated to such situation he immediately remembers and recalls. This is one of the greatest advantages of technology.

What kind of technology are you using, as in what kind of hardware, software?

We have smart boards, multimedia projectors and language labs. There are a number of mechanical contrivances which are coming up and usability of those is being first seen in Navodaya Vidyalayas, whether these technologies are usable and appropriate for Navodayas and whether technologies can be scaled up in these schools.

That means it is on experimental basis?

Yes, on experimental basis, because Navodaya is a dispersed kind of schooling system which is meant for gifted and talented children. We have Navodaya almost in all corners of India, except in Tamil Nadu. Because we are dispersed and in desolate locations we do not have effective means of connectivity; telecommunication infrastructure is lacking. Even now, there are still more than 150 Navodayas where we do not have tele-connectivity or connectivity through VSAT. We are trying to spread this infrastructure to all the Navodayas but that is taking time.

Many of your schools, teachers and students have won award for innovative use of ICT, how do you feel?

There have been individual innovations by teachers; they have put their learning mechanism, their teaching mechanism into an audio-visual input. We have some very good examples in subjects like social sciences where a very good ICT component has been developed in-house. We also have proposal from Google India where they want to have topic wise, class wise and subject wise education content based on CBSE, NCERT pattern in audio-visual format. They want us to provide teachers and learning materials which are taught in our classes and also improvise and integrate all these with relevant materials available on YouTube or other Google sites.

The idea is if we have some standardised format, for example any topic covered in NCERT, you know NCERT books are online so you can go to any topic, any subject of any class and turn the page on computer and whatever is given there is supplemented by audio-visual aid which is available on YouTube and if you integrate them the whole process becomes very illustrative, so that is the target we are trying to achieve. It will take time but the target is to have a customised format, customised software for Navodaya so that it is based on the CBSE pattern and it helps Navodaya students to learn and achieve higher grade.

As most of the students come from rural background how difficult it is to impart technology enabled education to them?

Look, I don’t foresee any difference because the ambience and atmosphere in Navodaya is as good as any modern school. We give all the facilities, which are available in cities; so, learning atmosphere is not deficit in terms of technology or in terms of quality. Initially, when the students come in sixth standard, there is inhibition because if you see the profile of students of Navodaya 75 per cent come from rural areas and 40 per cent come from those families where parents don’t know how to write. They are the first generation learners; so, there is an inhibition but once that inhibition goes off in 2-3 months the students catch up very fast because they are talented children and their learning process is much faster than an average child. They soon become well conversant with these technologies and start using it. In that sense, I don’t see any impediment in the adoption of technology as far as rural backwardness is concerned.

Do you think integration of technology will improve the Indian education system?

Definitely, it will improve. What is now becoming important is to make learning enjoyable, make the learning process an experiential learning process rather than wrought learning process, learning by activity. The child, first of all, identifies his own personality; what are the key areas where he has interest, key profession he identifies and then goes and learns about those professions, those subjects in a very rational and simple manner so that lots of thing which are provided in a book but are not required to be given to a child is weeded out and he comes out with a more logical coherent kind of learning; that is more important for us.

This will definitely help a child and go a long way; a revolution is being made as far as teaching through internet is concerned, we are experiencing virtual classroom of very good teachers. For example, MIT lectures are available though it is for higher studies, and if you see those lectures on YouTube you feel as if you are sitting in a class and learning. So, what will happen in due process is you will identify these teachers, who are the best teachers in different subjects, in different topics and their lectures can be captured and disseminated all over India so that every student can see and learn from that lecture.

Do you think government schools are not able to compete with private schools because of lack of infrastructure and funding?

Not at all, I foresee that as far as Navodaya is concerned, Navodaya is also a government school, we are far ahead in result with many private schools and mission schools; our pass result this time is 97 per cent and we have sent 145 students in IITs and 16 in IAS and as far as engineering and medical courses are concerned we will try to achieve the target of sending 10,000 students into professional courses this year, out of 12,000 students registered in science stream in Navodaya. So, if you go by the result more than 90-95 per cent of our students excel wherever they go in their career and they bring lots of kudos, lots of fame to Navodaya.

Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti was set up in 1985 to provide quality modern education to talented children in the rural India. Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas have been imparting education by integrating information and communication technology in their teaching learning process. Recently many of their teachers and students won awards for innovative use of technology.

In an exclusive interview with TechAtEdu, Manoj Singh, Commissioner, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, talks about how the Samiti has adopted ICT in its teaching-learning process and what are the future plans of the organisation.

How Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti is incorporating ICT in its teaching-learning process?

ICT is major pedagogic inputs as far as technology is concerned in Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya. Basically, on pilot basis, we are trying to disseminate technologies and give exposure to students in different schools of Navodaya Vidyalaya. We are also looking forward to scale up the regional experiences and trying to integrate them in all our 6,000 classrooms in 594 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya in India and we would like to see how we could scale up and integrate ICT in our system.

How technology will be helpful in this?

What has happened in the last five years is that bookish knowledge is being converted into visual knowledge by technology where through audio-visual inputs various learning processes have been simplified. This has been done basically to have the attention span of the student in a concentrated manner on a particular issue so that he can give up wrought learning, as you know in wrought learning there is emphasis on mugging up of the whole thing without understanding and it has been physiologically demonstrated that in wrought learning, after sometime the input goes into memory it perishes and there is no long-term retention; so, there is less recall but in this audio-visual mechanism the learning that takes place goes into long-term memory instead of short term memory and whenever the child is simulated to such situation he immediately remembers and recalls. This is one of the greatest advantages of technology.

What kind of technology are you using, as in what kind of hardware, software?

We have smart boards, multimedia projectors and language labs. There are a number of mechanical contrivances which are coming up and usability of those is being first seen in Navodaya Vidyalayas, whether these technologies are usable and appropriate for Navodayas and whether technologies can be scaled up in these schools.

That means it is on experimental basis?

Yes, on experimental basis, because Navodaya is a dispersed kind of schooling system which is meant for gifted and talented children. We have Navodaya almost in all corners of India, except in Tamil Nadu. Because we are dispersed and in desolate locations we do not have effective means of connectivity; telecommunication infrastructure is lacking. Even now, there are still more than 150 Navodayas where we do not have tele-connectivity or connectivity through VSAT. We are trying to spread this infrastructure to all the Navodayas but that is taking time.

Many of your schools, teachers and students have won award for innovative use of ICT, how do you feel?

There have been individual innovations by teachers; they have put their learning mechanism, their teaching mechanism into an audio-visual input. We have some very good examples in subjects like social sciences where a very good ICT component has been developed in-house. We also have proposal from Google India where they want to have topic wise, class wise and subject wise education content based on CBSE, NCERT pattern in audio-visual format. They want us to provide teachers and learning materials which are taught in our classes and also improvise and integrate all these with relevant materials available on YouTube or other Google sites.

The idea is if we have some standardised format, for example any topic covered in NCERT, you know NCERT books are online so you can go to any topic, any subject of any class and turn the page on computer and whatever is given there is supplemented by audio-visual aid which is available on YouTube and if you integrate them the whole process becomes very illustrative, so that is the target we are trying to achieve. It will take time but the target is to have a customised format, customised software for Navodaya so that it is based on the CBSE pattern and it helps Navodaya students to learn and achieve higher grade.

As most of the students come from rural background how difficult it is to impart technology enabled education to them?

Look, I don’t foresee any difference because the ambience and atmosphere in Navodaya is as good as any modern school. We give all the facilities, which are available in cities; so, learning atmosphere is not deficit in terms of technology or in terms of quality. Initially, when the students come in sixth standard, there is inhibition because if you see the profile of students of Navodaya 75 per cent come from rural areas and 40 per cent come from those families where parents don’t know how to write. They are the first generation learners; so, there is an inhibition but once that inhibition goes off in 2-3 months the students catch up very fast because they are talented children and their learning process is much faster than an average child. They soon become well conversant with these technologies and start using it. In that sense, I don’t see any impediment in the adoption of technology as far as rural backwardness is concerned.

Do you think integration of technology will improve the Indian education system?

Definitely, it will improve. What is now becoming important is to make learning enjoyable, make the learning process an experiential learning process rather than wrought learning process, learning by activity. The child, first of all, identifies his own personality; what are the key areas where he has interest, key profession he identifies and then goes and learns about those professions, those subjects in a very rational and simple manner so that lots of thing which are provided in a book but are not required to be given to a child is weeded out and he comes out with a more logical coherent kind of learning; that is more important for us.

This will definitely help a child and go a long way; a revolution is being made as far as teaching through internet is concerned, we are experiencing virtual classroom of very good teachers. For example, MIT lectures are available though it is for higher studies, and if you see those lectures on YouTube you feel as if you are sitting in a class and learning. So, what will happen in due process is you will identify these teachers, who are the best teachers in different subjects, in different topics and their lectures can be captured and disseminated all over India so that every student can see and learn from that lecture.

Do you think government schools are not able to compete with private schools because of lack of infrastructure and funding?

Not at all, I foresee that as far as Navodaya is concerned, Navodaya is also a government school, we are far ahead in result with many private schools and mission schools; our pass result this time is 97 per cent and we have sent 145 students in IITs and 16 in IAS and as far as engineering and medical courses are concerned we will try to achieve the target of sending 10,000 students into professional courses this year, out of 12,000 students registered in science stream in Navodaya. So, if you go by the result more than 90-95 per cent of our students excel wherever they go in their career and they bring lots of kudos, lots of fame to Navodaya.

What’s the budget allocated for a Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya for tech-enabled education?

There is no restrain on the budget; we are now coming up with a tariff based model which we are developing where we will be inviting the private sector to participate and invest in these smart classrooms, smart software and smart hardware. They will not only invest but also maintain and upgrade the system based on long-term collaboration between Navodaya and the private party and based on the per class tariff, per class annuity and whatever it comes we will pay them back. This is the model that we have developed. We will soon invite expression of interest and RFQ (request for quotation) from private parties. My vision is to convert all 6,000 Navodaya classrooms into smart classrooms at one go.

As you said, you will be calling private players; any player you can name like Intel, you have partnership with Intel?

There are plenty of private players but I do not think it will be appropriate to name but the bidding process will be transparent and as per as CVC (Central Vigilance Commission) guidelines, there will be price discovery and whosoever is ready to deliver the product at that price discovery we will engage him; that is the basic methodology we follow in government.