Participating in workshops is a gift I give myself. Being a
teacher and a workshop facilitator, I feel I need to grow and learn all the
time. I want to learn innovative techniques of classroom management and content
delivery so that I can help my students learn better and enjoy the process.
Therefore, I enrolled myself in TeachLAB: Inspiring
Innovation in Teaching, a 3-day immersive workshop for teachers to transform
them into education innovators. I liked the idea of how the workshop incorporated
the process of innovation with teaching.
The day started with an engaging activity. We were divided
into pairs and we asked each other about our favourite fictional character and
the reason behind it. Even though it was a simple activity, it got us connected
in a short period. I had met Shailendra Sah just on that day but I got to know
a lot about him through this activity. I could empathize with him as he talked
about his favourite fictional character jerry from Tom and Jerry. We also had
to create a physical gift for each other using papers, clay, lego and other
materials. It was a fun learning and sharing experience.
We later discussed how listening can help us understand our
users in case of teaching our students.
We had Bibhusan Bista, founder of YoungInnovations as the
keynote speaker. He comes from data-engineering background. He shared an
insightful and thought provoking session on 'understanding the problem' before
thinking about finding a solution. He gave an example of how we are generally
driven by the templates of older solutions to the problems and start seeking
for new ideas based on those older templates, and thus fall back on the same
old/same old thinking and solutions.
According to him, "Rather than focusing on the solution
we need to understand the problem better."
We also had the opportunity to attend a session with Prof
Chip Bruce. I had attending is previous workshops on "Community as
curriculum" where he discussed about asking the right question. This
session was a mini version of his previous workshops. This session gave me an
opportunity to reflect back on the things he had previously shared.
He talked about the concept of ALOHA which stands for:
Ask Listen Observe Help Ask
We were divided into teams and we had different topics to
work on. Assessment was the topic for our group. We had to define the problem and
form a problem statement.
Then we also had a short session on designing presentations
by Raunak Chaudhari. He summarized his session in a word, "CRAP"
which stood for:
C : Contrast R: Repetition (Consistent) A: Alignment P: Proximity
Another session was on 'Generating Solutions' by Sixit
Bhatta, CEO of Tootle. "The end goal of economic development is freedom of
expression," he mentioned. He discussed how enabling students to ask questions
made a difference.
On the final day we worked on creating prototypes and
testing it. In just three days we practiced the entire model of innovation and
saw how we could implement it in teaching.
To sum up a whole course in three days was challenging but
exciting at the same time. I think participating in workshops and conferences
is like taking a capsule; you get all that you need in a short time but it
might have some side effects. We did learn a lot but how much of it gets
implemented depends on the participants and their orientation. And we get a
broad idea of all the concepts discussed but we don't understand them in detail
due to the limitation of time.
I did use some of the things like the first activity and
some other techniques that I learnt during the workshop and it did work.
Some great presentations, brutally honest feedback sessions,
and the joy of learning and sharing, overall the session was productive.
I am grateful to the entire team of TeachLab for organizing this workshop and helping teachers transform into education innovators.
Photos: Empowerment Academy
