Creating Teachers Communities of Learning Report on the Subject
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Creating Teachers Communities of Learning Report on the Subject Teacher Forum Program IT for Change Table of Contents 1 Background.......................................................................................................................................3 2 Goals of the programme...................................................................................................................3 2.1 Subject Matter Expertise...........................................................................................................3 2.2 Subject Teacher Networks........................................................................................................4 3 Programme Description....................................................................................................................4 3.1 Status of Programme ................................................................................................................4 3.1.1 State Resource Person Workshop .....................................................................................4 3.1.1.1 Workshops follow up.................................................................................................5 3.1.2 District level (Teachers) Workshops – Cascade Model ....................................................5 3.1.3 Master Resource Persons (MRP) Workshops ..................................................................6 3.1.3.1 Support for the district level workshops....................................................................6 3.1.4 Other Workshops...............................................................................................................7 3.1.5 Public Software Tools.......................................................................................................7 3.1.6 Open Educational Resources.............................................................................................8 3.1.7 Web Portal.........................................................................................................................8 3.1.8 Public Software Educational Tools...................................................................................8 3.1.9 Handout for teachers.........................................................................................................9 3.1.10 Peer Discussions & Reviews...........................................................................................9 3.1.11 Policy Advocacy..............................................................................................................9 3.1.12 Films – Transforming Teacher Education with Public Software .................................10 3.1.13 Custom Public Software – GNU/Linux Ubuntu DVDs ...............................................10 3.1.14 Work in other states in India..........................................................................................11 4 Going Forward................................................................................................................................11 5 Abbreviations .................................................................................................................................11 6 Annexure A – List of Public educational tools used in the program .............................................13 Creating Teachers communities of learning – Subject Teacher Forum programme 2 1 Background This report discusses ITfC work in creating a 'Teachers Communities of Learning' through the Subject Teacher Forums, Karnataka in Mathematics, Science and Social Sciences in four divisions across Karnataka , being done with Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyaan (RMSA), Department of State Educational Research and Training (DSERT), Karnataka. The program was based on the extensive and intensive use of public software applications in mathematics, science and social science subjects to create a resource rich learning environment. The complete project is broken down into three phases spanning over three school academic years. Phase 1 (2011-12) : Basic computer literacy, Basic Web 2.0 Tools, Computer Aided Tools, creating local open educational resources and cascade training plan in 15 districts across Karnataka. The project used public software educational tools in mathematics, science and social science. A list of tools used is provided in Annexure A Phase 2 (2012-13) : Basic computer literacy, Basic Web 2.0 Tools, Computer Aided Tools, creating local resources and cascade training plan in remaining 15 districts across Karnataka. Strengthening mathematics, science and social science forums in the phase 1 districts. Additionally the language and art teachers forums is being started in select districts. The project will continue to use public software educational tools in mathematics, science and social science as well as languages and art. The creation and review of local open educational resources will continue. Creation and linking of block level physical forums with the virtual forums. Phase 3 (2013-14) : This phase will cover remaining districts in creation and strengthening of mathematics, science, social science, language and arts forums and open educational resources. Establish processes within the system for local school based technical support, email group, web portal maintenance, resource review and sharing. The project will continue to use public software educational tools in mathematics, science and social science as well as languages and art. 2 Goals of the programme The larger goal of the Subject Teacher Forum is to strengthen subject matter expertise amongst teachers and increase the range of curricular resources available to teachers for use in their classroom transactions and to support new models of teacher professional development based on creating 'teachers learning communities'. In this new model, in-service teacher development is continuous, as the teachers are in touch via email groups and web portal virtually, apart from the workshops. This enables their learning to be self-directed, self paced, peer based and mentored. Using public software tools and a virtual platform for creating and sharing open educational resources we have begin to address two core areas to enable deepening of subject knowledge among high school teachers. 2.1 Subject Matter Expertise Teachers gained understanding on the usage of many new and innovative resources and tools that are available on the public software platform. They learnt to navigate and surf for material from a rich variety of teaching-learning as well as informational resources already available on the internet. Apart from this teachers learned the skills of using technology based public educational tools listed in Annexure A. Since these tools were public software tools, they could be freely shared and this enabled many teachers to create their own resources integrating the local context and the Creating Teachers communities of learning – Subject Teacher Forum programme 3 syllabus thus allowing them to innovate different methods for teaching specific topics enriching their own professional expertise. The interactive nature of the tools also helped teachers who engaged seriously with the programme become constructive learners thus enhancing their own subject knowledge. This in turn will help them use constructivist pedagogical practices while teaching children in classrooms, which is the way forward as suggested by the NCF 20051. The teachers also discussed the NCF 2005 subject position papers in detail, and created open educational resources that are available on the web portal2 in each of the subject tabs. RMSA selected a few resources in each subject, created using public software tools, and published them as books and distributed it to all participating schools in the 15 districts. PSC also created a handbook and guide for teachers to use for computer literacy, web tools , educational tools and processes for creating open educational resources. All resources created both by Public Software Centre, as well as by the teachers are available as OER, under the creative commons licensing model. Thus the use of a large variety of public software tools helped teachers to deepen their professional skills and expertise. 2.2 Subject Teacher Networks The models of teacher forums that conform only to physical meetings at regular intervals, in the current context of a knowledge and information society are becoming inadequate. Also where physical forums have been absent teachers are working largely in isolation. To address this issue, all teachers participating in the Subject Teacher forum Programme were part of a virtual forum (email groups3). 3 Programme Description PSC conceptualised and designed the Subject Teacher Forum (STF) programme4 of RMSA, Karnataka, and provided training and support in the use of public software to empower teachers to become digitally literate, use public software educational tools to advance their own subject understanding, engage in discussions about the discipline (Mathematics, Science and Social Science), participate in an online community of learning and create and share open digital resources. The work spanned across high schools that have ICT facilities provided by the government across 15 districts in Karnataka. 15 workshops have been conducted by PSC and the high school teachers to create 240 resource persons, who trained around 2500 teachers in more than 800 schools in the 15 districts. 3.1 Status of Programme 3.1.1 State Resource Person Workshop PSC facilitated the