Re-imagining School and Training Institutes
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 27th Aug. 2014
Years of unmindful drudgery has led to schools becoming training grounds for Rasputin s' rather than being temples of learning that one may want them to be. What seems to be suffering the most, is the ability of students to think better solutions which may some time require rethinking and reimaging things or social set ups or social interactions. In general rote way of learning which is basically, mugging up for exam, does little to support “appreciation” for social setup or social interactions. One needs to ponder over, about the changes that may be needed.
A simple way would be to encourage state book publishers to bring out their 'Kindle' version which can be accessed through 'Pads'. Such 'Pads' should be support book availability for all classes and be cost effective in manner that these devices can be available for about 2-2.5K INR. Any revision in books should be supported via internet linkages and should be doable by a layman. The schools can buy these devices with annual license of another 10% of the price of devices. These can then be rented/ leased out to students for an annual fee of INR 500-800 which is favourable in comparison to overall cost of books for any single class. This will bring down cost of books to students as well as take away the pain of carrying school bags (hopefully this will also bring down some load in overfull buses and similar transportation vehicle to reduce some accidents). Falling cost of electronic devices as well as rising paper prices will ensure favorable economics. Some mechanism can be devised to capitalize upon the 'carbon credits' for such scheme.
It will also force other private publishers to compete with their own 'Kindle' versions. So competition will be on basis of overall offering and quality of intellectual material. These might be additionally supplemented with paid downloads or upgrades to their “kindle”, in case of specialized books. Falling cost of Memory chips, battery and display with ports to connect to internet directly or through blue tooth and enabling surfing support to enable payment transactions and download of fresh e-books/upgrades and a rugged design will ensure cheap devices which brings down overall costs to students with support for AV display as well in higher end versions. This supports revenue for the services delivered while takes away wastage i.e. pay for creativity and its distribution while eliminate cost of paper and its movement through a complex supply chain. The pads should support subscription of e-newspaper or may be games/comics for a charge to make such devices more useful in the eyes of users/people and their memory should support such downloads. The 'instant recharge powersticks' should support recharging such devices when required and the schools will have to invest is maintaining a bank of such sticks as well as their charging centers. The systems can also be exported to other nations with circumstances similar to ours. And the idea of creative thinking gets a huge leg-up & becomes institutionalized for a generation.
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 27th Aug. 2014
Years of unmindful drudgery has led to schools becoming training grounds for Rasputin s' rather than being temples of learning that one may want them to be. What seems to be suffering the most, is the ability of students to think better solutions which may some time require rethinking and reimaging things or social set ups or social interactions. In general rote way of learning which is basically, mugging up for exam, does little to support “appreciation” for social setup or social interactions. One needs to ponder over, about the changes that may be needed.
A simple way would be to encourage state book publishers to bring out their 'Kindle' version which can be accessed through 'Pads'. Such 'Pads' should be support book availability for all classes and be cost effective in manner that these devices can be available for about 2-2.5K INR. Any revision in books should be supported via internet linkages and should be doable by a layman. The schools can buy these devices with annual license of another 10% of the price of devices. These can then be rented/ leased out to students for an annual fee of INR 500-800 which is favourable in comparison to overall cost of books for any single class. This will bring down cost of books to students as well as take away the pain of carrying school bags (hopefully this will also bring down some load in overfull buses and similar transportation vehicle to reduce some accidents). Falling cost of electronic devices as well as rising paper prices will ensure favorable economics. Some mechanism can be devised to capitalize upon the 'carbon credits' for such scheme.
It will also force other private publishers to compete with their own 'Kindle' versions. So competition will be on basis of overall offering and quality of intellectual material. These might be additionally supplemented with paid downloads or upgrades to their “kindle”, in case of specialized books. Falling cost of Memory chips, battery and display with ports to connect to internet directly or through blue tooth and enabling surfing support to enable payment transactions and download of fresh e-books/upgrades and a rugged design will ensure cheap devices which brings down overall costs to students with support for AV display as well in higher end versions. This supports revenue for the services delivered while takes away wastage i.e. pay for creativity and its distribution while eliminate cost of paper and its movement through a complex supply chain. The pads should support subscription of e-newspaper or may be games/comics for a charge to make such devices more useful in the eyes of users/people and their memory should support such downloads. The 'instant recharge powersticks' should support recharging such devices when required and the schools will have to invest is maintaining a bank of such sticks as well as their charging centers. The systems can also be exported to other nations with circumstances similar to ours. And the idea of creative thinking gets a huge leg-up & becomes institutionalized for a generation.