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.