The Coimbatore Corporation and the American Indian Foundation, a non-profit organisation that works across India in education field, will soon launch an initiative to impart training in using media tools to Corporation school students.

This will enable the students to create documentaries, animations or photo essays on problems in their neighbourhood, which could be shown to the government officials concerned.

American Indian Foundation Director (Digital Equaliser programme) J. Sundarakrishnan told The Hindu here on Wednesday that students of Standards VI to X would also be trained in conducting brainstorming sessions to solve problems in their locality under this ‘Digital Story Telling’ initiative.

He said that the civic body had already agreed to sponsor five video cameras for implementing this initiative on a pilot basis.

The AIF officials said that initially the project would be implemented in five Corporation schools and was likely to be scaled up later based on its response. While this concept was an extracurricular activity, it would also include a few components of the curriculum.

A flexible training schedule would be drawn up to ensure it did not affect the student’s academics. The training would be provided during and after school hours besides on vacations. Some of the topics being contemplated include conserving power, health and hygiene besides saving water.

Concept

The concept of ‘flipped classroom,’ an educational model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed, would be experimented in the Corporation Special School for the Deaf in R.S. Puram, where all students and teachers will be provided with tablet computers.

Short video lectures created by the teachers would be uploaded into the tablets, which the students can view after school hours. This enables the teachers to devote in-class time to exercises, projects, or discussions, Mr. Sundarakrishnan said.

Students can watch, rewind, and fast-forward the lectures as and when they need.

He was in the city for a review meeting with the Corporation officials. This project was part of ‘Digital Equaliser’ Programme for which the civic body had inked a three-year MoU (2012-15) with the Foundation.