The Hindu                 30.04.2013

School students have solutions to civic, social problems

Whenever a medical study comes out correlating the intake of alcohol and tobacco to health to diseases such as cancer, the medical terms and jargon are simply too much for many people to comprehend and as such, they just remain unconvinced.

Now, they have a convincing reason for, a group of Corporation school students have conducted a study in Coimbatore among those consuming liquor and tobacco and found that 35 per cent of them had cancer, and were still continuing to indulge in their vices.

Various other health aliments also surfaced in the survey done by four students of Corporation Girls High School, Sidhapudhur.

In a simple but effective manner, they worked out a neat presentation with bar charts highlighting the proportion of various health hazards among those taking alcohol and tobacco.

This was but one of the scores of projects under way as part of a summer camp programme being conducted at 23 Corporation schools by American India Foundation, a non-governmental organisation working in the education sector across India.

Being conducted between April 22 and May 24, more than 1,000 students in Classes VI to IX will receive training to develop skills to tackle social and civic issues that plague their locality, says V. Alexander, zonal coordinator (DE programme) of foundation,

The training has been split into three categories: Digital Story Telling (DST), Project-Based Learning (PBL) methodology, and subject content.

In DST for which five Corporation schools have been selected, he says the students will be trained in recording an issue through video or still camera, compile the content and prepare a documentary using software such as Windows Movie Maker and Photo Story.

In PBL, the students take the concept from the curriculum and compare it to a real life situation by making field survey, analysing the findings and suggesting a solution.

“We just provide the initial training in using these softwares. The entire documentary is shot and compiled only by the students. Several DST and PBL projects have already been completed to topics ranging from water conservation, plastic use to alcohol and tobacco addiction,” he says.

This project was part of ‘Digital Equaliser’ (DE) Programme — for which the civic body had inked a three-year MoU (2012-15) with the Foundation — under which subject content was provided in Tamil through technology. It covers all the 10 high schools, 16 higher secondary schools, and one special school of Coimbatore Corporation, which had provided 464 computers for the project.

The Hindu                   22.04.2013

New software for Corporation schools demonstrated

Staff Reporter

New software that would provide online the entire details of a student’s right from the time he/she gains admission to a school to the time the student leaves the school was demonstrated by a private company to the Corporation officials.

According to Mayor S.M. Velusamy, the Management Information System could also be used for online monitoring of teachers, students’ attendance and school administration.

“Parents will be able to view their child’s marks and attendance online. Further, questions banks will also be available online through this software for the benefit of students. Examination results can also be announced online,” he said.

This system would be soon implemented in Corporation schools, the Mayor added.

According to education department officials, this software was likely to be implemented as a pilot project at the Corporation Girls Higher Secondary School at Ramakrishnapuram for students of Standards IX and XI.