The lockdown followed by COVID-19 pandemic locked almost all of us inside our homes. Several employers allowed their employees to work from home and classes went online. However, for the students from the rural area, online classes became a hurdle because of non-availability of smartphones and connectivity.
To overcome the difficulty, many teachers from rural schools came up with unique ideas to teach their student. In one such case, Satara based teacher Balaji Jadhav came up with the idea of teaching his students through conference calls. Jadhav has won HBN Creativity & Inclusive Award for his ‘lockdown teaching’ innovation.
Jadhav started teaching through conference calling from April 2020, because his students had simple keypad phones, and the internet is a major issue in Satara. Jadhav would contact 10 students in one conference call in the morning and evening. He has 40 students in his school.
At the beginning of lockdown, he used to tell stories in the morning session and in the evening session the same story would be narrated by students. Now Jadhav is converting educational topics in story format and teaching through that, so listening gets interested. After that, he asked students to write down the stories narrated on the phone call.
In 1.5 month his students were skilled in writing and narrating the stories.
Then he went one step ahead and asked students to record the stories and now there 500 such students recorded stories available.
The award jointly instituted by Honey Bee Network and GIAN is given to ideas for creativity and innovation or to traditional knowledge practices, which solve day-to-day problems faced by society.
This year, around 2500 entries from 87 countries were received by GIAN. These were screened by eminent scholars/practitioners at the primary stage followed by expert jury review. The winners include 10 international awards, 4 Coping with COVID-19 awards and 4 appreciation awards from nine countries.
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