"Am I made for my dream career”

19^th  December, 2012 shall be written in letters of gold for the young generation of Indore."Am I made for my dream career” was the topic for the seminar conducted by Indus World School, Indore at Ravindra Natya Grah. Over 600 students from various schools attended the interactive seminar. The eminent speakers comprised of Dr. Srivathsan Vasudevan,, Dr. Siddharth Rastogi- Fellow IIM Ahmedabad, Mr. Satya Narayanan R.- IIM Banglore and Mr. Shiv Kumar- IIM Calcutta. This enabled the interactive seminar to become a grand success.

“Follow your dream”; "know thyself” were the key phrases used practically by all the speakers. Mr. Srivathsan Vasudevan faculty at IIT Indore spoke about inter disciplinary approach to education & shared the inspiring stories of Steve Jobs and many such eminent personalities. He implored the students that persistence and hard work alone is the way to success.

Mr. Siddharth Rastogi(Faculty IIM Indore) spoke that we should avoid to giving excuses and should not  resort to blame game. He stated that geographical locations or adverse conditions do not deter firm resolution, to pursue your dream career.

Mr. R. Shiv kumar, Alumnus IIT, IIM/ Faculty at Indus World School Indore spoke about ambition and discipline being the catch words of success. He shared an anecdote of how he got inspired by a student handicapped with vision, but determined to qualify IIM. He stated that ever since he was inspired to continue in the wonderful transaction as a mentor. 

Mr. Satya Narayan R. Chairman CL Educate told the students about how irrelevant the current careers are as against the need of 2030. He stated following one’s dream and enjoying it is the best way to ensure success and happiness. He also stated that to pursue anything an investment of 10,000 hours spread across years persistently shall ensure success kissing the path you tread

Students posed several questions to the speakers which were graciously answered by the speakers, however due to lack of time, Indus World School promised to respond to the query in the due consultation with the speaker within a week through mail.

Exhibition at IWS Pune...

An ‘Exhibition’! What would one expect to see in a school exhibition? Exhibits of children’s art and crafts, charts models etc.

 IWS, Pune displayed their first exhibition at the Junior School , in Salunke Vihar on 3^rd November 2012. Principal of Canterberry School, Mrs. Susan Daulton inaugurated the exhibition.  The exhibition had a twist unlike other exhibitions in the city. The theme was ‘Under water world’ , ‘Animal kingdom’ and  ‘21^st Century’.  The little Indusians and mentors changed the ambience of their classrooms. The nursery, PP-1 and PP-2 children painted their classroom blue to give the feel of Under water. They then exhibited their works ie different fishes and under water creatures that they had  made. The fishes were seen on the walls and some hanging from above. The little ones told the parents the names of fishes and also asked them questions. It is all thanks to the Indus way of teaching that our Indusians at such an early age were able to give out so much of information. Grade -1 students made their class look like ‘Animal kingdom’. They made trees. Animals etc. They also presented a short skit to convey the message that we all live under the same sky. The skit was appreciated by all. Grade -2 presented a presentation on Scratch program which is going to be a part of the curriculum from grade -3 onwards. It made us proud that a grade -2 student was able to present this scratch program. There was a presentation on the ‘Sunday Science School’ by Mr. Mukesh. The Exhibition was a grand success.

CBSE West Zone Chess Tournament

Starting Mess for more than 1500 people

Indus World School, Indore hosted the CBSE West Zone Chess Tournament from 1st to 4th October. More than 90 CBSE schools from 8 states participated in this tournament. Close to 1000 students pitted their brains against each other in this tournament. Mr. Sandeep Bhandari HOD Sports, SICA School, had been appointed as observer by CBSE and Mr. Pranesh Yadava, (International Arbiter) was the chief arbiter for the tournament. 

About 750 students from neighbouring states were provided accommodation at the school campus, with girls staying at Chawani and the boys at Jhalaria. Children enjoyed the delicious food cooked by the school mess. School Chairman Mr. Shiva Kumar shared that all staff worked tirelessly and made all efforts for the smooth functioning of the tournament. At the end of the tournament, the participating teams in their feedback particularly appreciated the cheerful support extended by all school staff.

The well known Indian Wrestler, Arjun Awardee Mr Kripashankar Patel was the chief guest for the opening ceremony of the tournament. After declaring the meet open, he exhorted all participants to never lose hope. Sharing incidents from his own experiences in international competitions, he spoke about how even the last moments of a game can be crucial and deciding.

The Opening Ceremony began with a march past of all participating teams. Principal Ms Smita Rathore welcomed all dignitaries and participating teams. School Director Prof Aaditya Lohana spoke about the philosophy and vision of Indus World School. He also administered the oath to all participants. Music and dance performances by students of Indus World School set the mood for the programme. The excitement and passion of chess, which is truly a battle of minds, was symbolized through a Chess Dance in which the dancers depicted an entire game of chess through their dance moves. Mr. Girish Belkar proposed the vote of thanks. The programme was anchored by Saloni Vyas of class XI.

The first round of the tournament began post lunch. About 450 matches happened simultaneously in all the rounds. From Indus World School, Vinamra Rathi (Class VII), Osho Jain (Class VI), Dhyan Yajnik (Class V), Aditya Tiwari (Class VI), represented the school in Under 14 mixed category and Keshav Krishnamurti Sharma (Class X), Rajat Gupta (Class X), Abhishek Kanthed (Class X), Sarthak Agrawal (Class VIII), Anuj Parmar (Class XI) represented the School in the Under 19 mixed category. Many dignitaries like Mr. Sanjay Kasliwal and Mr. Anil Fatehchandani, including Principals from various schools, Indore Sahodaya Chairman Mr. Rao, Mr. Rajesh Awasthi visited the school during the tournament to encourage the participants. 

The Tournament ended with a closing ceremony on the 4th of October. On the occasion an inter-state dance representing the different participating states was performed by the students of Indus World School. The school music band also performed farewell songs for the participants. Children of Ananda classes gave a performance giving the message that 'nobody's perfect'. Mr. Shiva Kumar, Chairman, Indus World School and Prof. Aaditya Lohana, Director of Indus World School Indore and Raipur, gave away the medals and appreciated the performance of the participants. The four days tournament ended on a positive note as children bid goodbyes to their newly made friends from different states. 

The winners of the tournament will represent West Zone in the Nationals to be held from 1st to 5th November. The Nationals of CBSE Chess tournament is also going to be hosted by Indus World School, Indore. 

Cafe 10 to 8 by young entreprenures of  IWS

Mini business big learning

While the matches were in progress, the class XI students of Indus World School got a lesson in entrepreneurship. 10 students put up a canteen stall named 10-2-8. These entrepreneurship students managed all accounts, book keeping, purchase and profit/loss. The canteen was a hit from day one. The students have got a hands-on experience in all that is involved in setting up a small business.

Localites learn chess

Residents from the neighbouring Jhalaria village got an opportunity to learn chess in Indus World School. The school Chairman Mr. Shiva Kumar said that Indus World School has always believed in reaching out to the public and sharing with them the benefits of education. As the school hosted the CBSE West Zone Chess Tournament, the school decided to use the opportunity to generate awareness and interest in the local villages about chess. As part of this decision, residents of neighbouring Jhalaria village were invited to visit the school campus. They received instructions on the basic moves and opening stragegies of chess. Mr. Sharad Bhandari, an agriculturalist, shared that he had never imagined he would be able to play chess but the guidance received from school was a novel experience and he looks forward to learning the game further. Payal Sisodia a class IX student  said that this was an enjoyable experience and she would encourage her other friends also to learn the game and play with her. 

‘My Parenting Style’- FB Application by IWS

Dear Parent,

As parents, we have always wondered if we are using the right parenting techniques to bring up our children, so that they can be equipped with the right life skills as they grow up.  We have also often looked for inputs to help us in this very critical area.

The Research team of Indus World School has now developed a unique parenting application which will surely help us learn more in the area of effective parenting. What makes it special, is that it is the first educational parenting application developed by a school in India.

I am happy to announce the release of the My Parenting Style application from Indus World School on Facebook. This test  is developed by the research team of Indus World School, India. 

What is the My Parenting Style application?

It is a free application which will help a you to understand your style of parenting when looked at from 6 dimensions - Nurturing, Normative, Problem Solving, Resilient, Confronting and Creative.

Each of these dimensions yields a style of parenting. At the end of this exercise, you shall get a report on your scores on the various styles of parenting you adopt, To help you to understand the different styles of parenting, you will also get a detailed explanation on each style and tips which will help you to improve on each style.

How to access the application?

Just enter on your favourite browser :  http://www.indusworldschool.com/fb

or  go to www.facebook.com/indusworldschool  and  link to the application will be available.

Or go to facebook and search for My Parenting Style application

We are sure this application would help you understand yourself as a parent better. Please take the test and let us know your feedback.

You can send your feedback on :  sujit@careerlauncher.com.

“In how many ways is your child intelligent…….Understanding the multiple intelligences of your child.”

As a part of the ongoing ‘Learning Series’ Indus World School Ludhiana organized a workshop titled “In how many ways is your child intelligent…….Understanding the multiple intelligences of your child.” Mr R Sreenivasan conducted this session. Mr. Sreenivasan is one of the most sought after consultants for leading newspapers like The Times of India, Hindustan Times and The Indian Express on caree

rs, having contributed regular columns and key speaker in seminars. His motivational talks have inspired a large number of students and he continues to be in demand by the school community - schools, teachers and students. Shreeni, also a corporate trainer has been a facilitator for CRESTCOM, Denver, US-based, largest executive training corporate in the world with presence in over 55 countries. 

Entirely interactive, the session was an eye-opener for the parents who tend to impose their own preferences upon their children based on their own ‘programming’. Sreeni narrated several stories and anecdotes to make his point. It was an enthralling session with Sreeni talking about various static behaviours parents show while dealing with their children. He emphasized the point that children do as they see their parents do. Learning happens through experience & it is very important to ‘bring’ the ‘outside world’ into the classrooms. And this is what education at Indus is all about. Children create their knowledge through experiences.

Howard Gardener’s theory on Multiple Intelligence was decoded and presented in a very interesting and easy to comprehend style. There were a lot of hands-on activities that helped the parents to understand and spot the intelligences that their children possess. Individual action exercises, open house discussion, thinking exercises followed by group sharing were some of the activities where the parents were actively engaged in understanding each of the intelligences - inter-personal, intra-personal, kinesthetic, naturalistic, linguistic, musical and spatial. 

The parents found the session very interesting and insightful. The workshop ignited in them a desire to create an environment to enliven their own lives and pass it on to their children. They also got a deep insight into the activities that could be done to nurture and hone the talents and intelligences in children. The session also helped parents to be aware of the career choices that would be suitable for their children.

Mr Sujit Bhattacharya, CEO Indus World Schools, shares his views on effective use of Information Technology in school pedagogy

In the past few years there has been a huge amount of attention from  government and schools on the concept of smart classrooms. The heady mix of media rich content and computing power is supposed to make our children able to learn better. Many schools have spent humongous amounts of money in buying sophisticated hardware and software to make our classes smarter. The moot question is if this is really making our children smarter?

Seymour Papert, the father of Artificial Programming and an undisputed thought leader in the domain of education, psychology and computing, has made some interesting observations on this topic. In typical situations of IT usage in

classrooms we let computers to put our children through various exercises at different difficulty levels. Computers are also programmed to dispense of a lot of information from a vast database.  In a certain way, computers are programming the child's learning.

Papert believes that the real learning from technology comes when the child programs the computer and not the other way around.
When a child learns to control a computer, the child is actually teaching the computer to think. And in the attempt to do so, the child explores about how he thinks, and essentially starts to learn to think about thinking. This process (also called epistemology) is actually a very sophisticated evolution of the child's ability to acquire knowledge and build new mental models and structures for creating new learning. Evidently this process can be enabled at an early age with children with the help of technology.

A simple way to do this is by exposing children to early age programming. Nowadays there are many free software which can be installed and explored by parents and teachers who have no formal knowledge of programming at all. One of the ways working with computers enables intellectual development,  is by advancing the progression from concrete thinking, which begins at age 6,  to formal thinking processes which develops at age 12. In schools where visual programming is introduced by age 7 or 8, we often observe children  manipulating repetitive commands while trying to make a simple game involving shapes and colour combinations. Thus, combinatorial thinking (nested loops in programming parlance), which is a formal process of thinking can be advanced much earlier than otherwise possible. This can have a significant effect on the trajectory of intellectual development of the child. Some of the simple benefits of exploring computer programming is on mathematical concepts. The concretization of  numbers concepts, understanding of  negative number spaces,  two dimension and three dimensional algebra,  geometrical shapes, distances and angles etc all become less abstract when evolved through a exciting problem solving approach by a child.

The computer culture has already given us very useful vocabulary like input, output and feedback.  For example, the concept of the 'bug' allows the child to understand that 'debugging' is a simple repeated process of error rectification, something natural and free of guilt or shame. Thus culture contributes in helping the children move to a higher level of thinking and understanding, even at an emotional level. 

 

Parents and teachers today must try and expose their children to early experiences in programming. This will require us to break traditional curriculum and explore the usage of new age visual programming techniques such as Scratch (developed in MIT) and also fabulous products like LOGO (also MIT) which actually got the entire revolution  started in the eighties.  Technology and curriculum  choice of schools can surely make a substantial difference in the way children reflect and analyze, which is the real path to smartness, and the not the dumb consumption of multimedia entertainment in the garb of technology..