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Being in Kerala, we were the early ones to have an abrupt closure of the session and school on the 9^th of March. We have smartboards, so we contemplated the option of streaming classes using smartboards. Then came the nationwide lockdown.

Since we were nearing summer vacation, so we got some time to equip ourselves. When we understood that even teachers cannot come to the school to use the smartboard facility, we knew at best they can carry the lessons from their homes. That’s when we started zoom conferences in the month of April for the senior students to support them. That naturally trickled down to all the classes by June. So now we use our LMS support coupled with the Zoom and Google classroom to carry out our various activities.

Something we could clearly bang on was our teacher’s agility and abilities to adapt to sudden changes, to seize the opportunity amid a changing landscape. Teachers did not have any summer break because they were getting ready for taking the leap – training, content preparation, testing devices and technology. From the classroom, full of children to virtual classrooms was an unimaginable journey. Teachers needed just assurance and direction, which the institute was ready to give them They had to explore all the features before taking them to the students.

For smaller children, we explored more platforms and then we found See-Saw. It’s American technology. Now, our entire kindergarten and the primary school use this Both students and teachers love it. In a week, we see 1200 odd activities from our students. It is not teacher-based, it is a lot to do with the students. Another wonderful feature is that of collaboration. Students love the process of working on each other’s’ strengths to do their work. Children are going beyond books, there is a lot of research and conversation that the children are getting into.

Our teachers have used this opportunity to reskill themselves, adding more skills, different skills, getting creative. There are a whole lot of pluses here. The growth that has happened is beyond proportion. Now students can learn from teachers from any part of the world and teachers can teach students in any part of the world. Students and parents realised that the home itself is a big laboratory and a learning space except perhaps we don’t know how we do our regular physics, chemistry and biology.

A lot of interesting interactions happened. Parent expertise came on board, they spoke to the students on various subjects and real-life applications of concepts. We could get knowledge experts from various walks of life talking to our students.

The only minus is that we miss the face to face interaction. We think we will surmount that also soon.

Curious time is certainly a great platform for children’s expressions and also the schools. Creativity can be expressed in various forms. It allows us to see the best practices across the globe. The teachers and parents see their ward’s work online. We feel proud that our school and students have got highlighted there. More than highlighting a school or an individual, it is an effort to reach out to the educational community and to see that what are the best things that you know we could best practices that we could share with each other at schools.

Curious Times allows us to look at the people’s perspective about things around them as they vary. But as educators what we are seeing is that at Curious Times you are making that effort to share all the good practices in the field of education.

Further adding to that, the whole concept of voice and choice of students and the expression of students and teachers is a great forum to come about in terms of the Curious Times Magazine. We like the whole concept of what you stand for, knowledge sharing, best practices, bringing schools, teachers and students together. We look forward to connecting with other schools through collaborative projects to have a greater understanding of how we are culturally adapting and handling various issues in society.

Curious Times has a great future and shares a wonderful purpose of enlightening and discovering the world and ourselves so keep up the great job. Keep tapping the potential in the children and keep exploring the various opportunities for all the children across the country.

Our best wishes to the whole teaching community through the medium of Curious Times.

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