Hi all,
12.05 pm 13th Jan 2012 ,Principal's Cabin at Abasaheb Prashala Day School near
15August Square Rastapeth Pune ; A visibly anoyed mother with her middle school
son visits principal to discuss her sons school absentism the mother informs
sons father is expired five years ago , She is working as home maid at some
middle class families and making a living; Principal does her job very well ;
seems such situations are quite regular and routin to the principal madam.
12.15-12.30 School prayer And at 12.30 bell Wikipedia Academy -Sans any
projector or laptop only help available is the black board , a chalk and a
duster- begins in Standard 8A aprox 35-40 students (An equal mix of girls and
boys)
Students are asked to show their hands to find out what do they know about
internet only one hand comes up and rest of the faces are blank and now the
Wikipedian knows the challenge at hand. Mind the fact that the day before
School teacher informs that Wikipedia is part of School syllabus in english
language for 8th standard since 1999 usually he teaches the first page of the
lesson the rest of the pages can not be given justice without internet support
(for aprox 20,00,000 every year ) students across Maharashtra .The class goes
ahead the wikipedians requests to make stack of all their books on a table and
request for a Home Work note book with a promis that it will not be opened, one
girl gets convinced and provides the same .
Childern smartly give different different answers when asked what is their in
their bunch of school books , Most of them say "study" one Student answers as
Mahiti ie.information and a shy girl answers as Knowldge.The students know that
knowledge available in bunch of school is limited and there on concept of
encyclopedia is explained the word they never heared before, they answer
smartly the wikipedian explains By now children are getting in interactive
mode discussion goes about curiosity information and knowldge . Without any
teaching aid demo laptop how do one explains what is internet ? Luckily
children knew about computers So with crude examples a book was a web portal
and pages ther in were web pages and then rest of internet story without
internet at hand .(May be few schools in rural areas still wont have computers
too and wont know how a teacher explains what is Computer)
Now the student who provided Home Work note book is asked What will be her
reaction if not herself but other students from the class write her home work
note book turn by turn ,The entire class of students smiles freely and a smile
comes even on the face of the class teacher , who was very patiantly sitting in
last row of the class for wikipedia academy.
Wikipedia home page is drawn on black-board and The black board itself is edit
window . When asked any doubts faces blank, about a thing they never saw what
doubts they will ask ? But when asked what is Wikipedia ? a girl student Laxmi
stands up and answers what she understood to her best about wikipedia in
learned in Wiki academy Students are requested to clap for her correct answer
and a chorus of clapps begins !!
Later Principal agrees to importance of introduction to internet and informs
about their schools steps to upgradation of computer lab infrastructure , After
a cup of tea with the class teacher,the Wikipedia leaves school premises for
next meeting.
Before one day that is on 12th Jan we receive info that a pilot project in some
of Maharashtra schools will be extended from coming academic year to all
schools mandatorily along with practical unicode Marathi typing and internet ,
with a chance to explore further collaboration for marathi language wikisource
and school board .
Rgds
-Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
