A day in the school with techies

Early morning three hours ride to the country side rejuvenate our senses isn't it? March first week, spring season dressed in its green gown. The beautiful climate welcomed us all the way to the school.
Academic year is coming to conclude in less than a month, it's time  to visit our rural school, ZPHS Gandeed to evaluate their learning through virtual classroom. We made it on 7th March '15 along with a new set of volunteers working in different professions.

We were excited to see the pupils after five months; though we daily interact them in virtual classroom. Inspite of Holi festival prior day, more than 80% pupils turned up to school on Saturday. That makes our teaching unique.

Volunteers were thrilled to meet the pupils, they spent the whole day in their assigned class. Experience in their own words...

"When I talked to these pupils I was really amazed and wondered that they are really good in English. They have learned a lot from virtual class teaching. EFF has given them good opportunity from what they're learning from their regular syllabus. Moreover, they said an interesting line on me - 'this is the first time we're talking to a Punjabi guy, you are literally awesome'. These words made my day." - Supreet Singh, Design Manager at PurpleTalk

"I got the opportunity to teach the 7^th class students through EFF. Before going there my thoughts were like, ‘You are going to a govt school and do not expect much from their side’.

But they proved me wrong and I am very happy for that.

They are poor in English but very enthusiastic, not afraid to express what they know and made my life hard with missiles like questions flying from all around. They have appetite for learning. 

Thank you EFF for making them wonder kids. I can feel all the efforts you have put in when I stood between them.

All the best.

And thank you for giving me the opportunity to teach as well as learn. " - Manohar Krishna, Director & CEO, Creative Bite Digital studio  

"It was an extraordinary experience for me to teach small kids. I was amazed to meet those kids and see how enthusiastic they were to learn the new things through online education system introduced by EFF. After meeting the students, I couldn't judge if they were the students of some govt. school in some village. This kind of initiatives can give a new shape to our Indian education system. Keep it up EFF"- Harsimran Kaur, Freelance designer, sewer & home maker

"Some of the students looked passive, but when I asked questions they answered with full explanation, it was beyond my expectations. I taught them how to give presentation using the resources available-like piece of chalk and black board. I was amazed to see a boy how well he implemented my words. Pupils need this kind of platform to inspire, they'll automatically become good citizen. There is something lacking in this 8th Std, but they're putting good efforts in English-speaking skills.This is the first time I am in between kids, it's wonderful experience; I really learned a lot from them, looking forward to teach and learn from these innocent and smart champs." - Shiva Dasoju, SSE-QA, PurpleTalk

"I dealt with 7th Telugu Medium students. Praveeen, Ravi, Mahesh, Mahendra, Yadaiah have been the best performers." - Nagaraju, SE-Dev at PurpleTalk'

Volunteers are the key resource for a non-profit organisation. On behalf of EFF, we express our gratefulnes to all these techies for making our evaluation easier. A part from it, hanging out with you guys was great fun for the pupils :)

EFF is back again with assorted team: motivating the students

Finally yes!we are here this year to discuss with you about the EFF trip to country side, Gandweed ZPH School. Once in every three months we visit the school to check the over all development and progress among the students, but this time we were late by one month because of the formation of Telangana and Andhra states and hours of power cuts especially in villages. Due to which we could not take the virtual classes regularly.
Every visit of ours, we introduce new set of volunteers from various professions, by doing so, students, get excited to see new faces who could express their intentions, motivating and encouraging the pupils by inserting corporate play schools methods of teaching, rather than the routine presentation teaching.

Volunteers from different backgrounds implant their teaching skills and involve the students in activities such as classroom games, speaking activities, quiz competition, reading, social issues etc... This time we have concentrated only the speaking skills of the students because we wanted to evaluate how well they are able to cope up with English and in their communication skills. The topics that we have emphasized this time were; Role of News paper in our life, what is your aim in life, Story telling and above all last not the least, Eradication of child marriage etc....

Improvisation

At the end of the day, when we took the summary class wise, it was impressive! The virtual classroom teaching helped most of the students to perform well in all categories of subjects, social issues, general knowledge, speaking activities, current affairs, and English grammar and so on. Over all it was amazing to learn that students have put in lot of interest in learning to speak in English. The different methods of teaching especially, to those vernacular medium students of classes VI and a very small number of students from other classes needs an extra concentration individually, to help them shine like other students. Who are already in that stream, in a nut shell, lots of efforts to be put in with students to overcome the fear of stage and speech. Perhaps help them to take daring steps to disclose their talents standing in front of the class and audience.

Vehemently speaking, while the presentation of Hockey Sticks along with items relating to them and some Educational Literature books were awarded for the students for the excellent performance in the activities that were conducted by the EFF.We noticed that there were lot of people standing  at the school main gate and some of them sitting on the walls while others standing witnessing the proceedings taking place in the school premises. Out of their anxiety and excitement, we could hear  them clapping in joy along with the students cheering the students who are presented with gifts. We the EFF are happy to bring this awareness among the residents of Gandweed Village and are very pleased with the encouragement they offered to the students.

This school visit has created awareness: In student's performances, and how we need to work with them in the areas they need to be polished to make an improvement in their progress.

On behalf of EFF, we sincerely thank all the Purpletalk employees and others who supported the achievers and made the children happy at the end of the day. We hope to get the same support and encouragement from all of you, in the future too. We thank the school management for cooperating with us in all errands.