Vidyoday

Supported by: Wipro

About Vidyoday

Vidyoday is trying to nudge the scientific temper and life skills development of students from secondary local body schools. The broader perspective behind taking such initiative is to unlock the potential of the creative mind and facilitate the vision of students to solve social problems using scientific approach. We believe that, with such an environment, students can be the future leaders of their society. The organization is trying to achieve following objectives: Developing and spreading a replicable, low-cost project-based model of education; to provide children with opportunities of application of their learning and innovative thinking to address their real life problems; creation of a platform to develop rational thinking in students of Grades 6-9 of local body schools; and, development of creative, thought-provoking and problem-solving mind-set in these students.

Projects

We were involved with the students of the government primary schools to achieve these objectives by creating projects and conducting activities that support the same. Now, we are aiming to work with government schools during the teaching hours. We are also planning to start the initiative Shiksha Samvad, which will conduct the sessions with government-school teachers to introduce PBL learning in the teaching sessions at school. This will deepen the engagement of the organization with schoolteachers. The government school system can move for a sustainable change in rural government schools. We are planning an exit policy, where the organization will engage with a school for 3 years and by then, it will create a sustainable model of teaching sessions for the school.

Sunday Science Skill School: The Sunday Science Skill School in Kolhapur provides complete freedom and flexibility to experiment with our ideas devoid of the restrictions posed by the formal setting of the school and its curriculum. We started our work by establishing a community center by the name of Sunday Skill School (SSS) in June 2015 for students in Std. 8^th. The aim was to provide quality education to the children with focus on skill development of the diverse aspects of personality.

Shiksha Samvad:  Shiksha Samvad is a pan-India continuous engagement program with teachers from multiple local body schools, NGOs, and educational institutions. It introduces teachers to the PBL (Problem Based Learning) method using the constructivist approach to education. The program runs for 2 days (5 hours each) with a minimum of 10 teachers to foster the development of PBL in their own classrooms as well as to become role models for their students in life. The organization conducted several Shiksha Samvad programs for the last 4 years in metro cities, semi-towns and rural urban setups.

Sevankur Project: This is a limited period school initiative for the children of migrated families during the sugarcane-cutting season. Since the children have to leave their schools, we provided them with an opportunity to continue their learning during this time as well. This initiative has been on since the inception of the organization.

Locations

Vidyoday worked in various parts of Kolhapur and other parts of Maharashtra for a better education system. The organization ran the community center in Abdullat village and Ichalkaranji city. Dnyandeep Project was running in 8 schools of 5 villages viz. Abdullat, Latwadi, Herwad, Shiradwad, and Shivnakwadi of Shirol Tehsil, District Kolhapur in 2019-20. Occasional workshops, camps, and initiatives were conducted mainly in Ichalkaranji city and in various schools of Hatkanangale and Shirol Tehsil. Due to financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic, Vidyoday is operational only in Abdullat, Shiradwad, and Shivnakwadi at present.

Approaches adopted in response to COVID

As COVID struck last year, we all shifted to the new normal. The meaning of learning changed for children, as all the teaching-learning processes shifted to virtual spaces or out-of-school spaces. With this, all of us adjusted to the change by introducing new interventions, structures, and stakeholders. Our operations in schools came to a total halt after the lockdown. For a month, we conducted online classes with the Dnyandeep project schoolchildren, who had digital access. Since this was not very successful, we started ‘Fun Lane Schools’ for younger children at pre-primary and primary stage to continue their basic education. Here, the children gathered at a common place in the community where a teacher from their community conducted classes for them.

In December 2020, we restarted our work offline again in three Community centers for children of Dnyandeep project schools from three villages. This covered only those students who lived nearby our centers (almost 40%) and not everybody. Due to COVID-19, we could connect the students from the project to the administrative officers and some resource persons from various fields. Students from rural areas became tech-savvy and confident in communication skills as they conducted the question-answer session with the resource persons.

In July to September 2020, we designed and conducted an Experiential Online Science Program named Little Kalam Science School for a new group of middle school children. We gave them activities of science-based toys, cooking, gardening, bio-enzyme etc. to do at home. We discussed the science behind these activities in the online sessions. It gained a very positive response and we plan to integrate it with our upgraded curriculum when the school restarts.

Plan for Next 1-3 Years

Vidyoday’s primary focus will be to upgrade the existing curriculum based on our experiences. Last year, we worked in 8 schools. Our curriculum has been centered on various hands-on activities. Now, we realized that it is not possible for teachers to conduct these activities in the class; especially when we aim for a larger-scale implementation. We therefore wish to redesign our curriculum such that we conduct various activities with children and prepare teachers to integrate these activities in their own teaching plans. Our next step will be in this direction before we aim for scaling up. Therefore, we would love to work with the two existing schools in the next year too with our core team members leading the activities and approach. We also plan to conduct a teacher capacity-building program for Science PBL Model with two local government schools for one year. The main objective is to create an environment of sustainable adoption of the program by teachers in coming years. We will be engaged with the teachers from government schools every week. We will create a learning platform for teachers and exchange our lessons.