Ms. Asha from The STEM Makers, had the opportunity to lead a 5 day training session , organised by Samagra Shiksha, to 70+ IT-ITeS trade Vocational Training Teachers, from Government schools across various districts in Andhra Pradesh. These teachers were covering various topics under Vocational Training in IT – ITeS trade along with mainstream education courses for classes 9 – 12 . The IT – ITeS trade curriculum exposes students to tools required for Domestic Data Entry Operator, Junior Software Developer, Web Developer roles.

The teacher trainees included experienced teachers with almost 8 years experience and new teachers who joined a week to ten days prior. The training session included modules on why, what, how etc of Vocational Education, details of structural framework at different levels from school to district to national organizations working on different aspects essential for imparting quality vocational training on day 1. Day 2 included sessions on Pedagogy, Classroom management, Employability skills, Entrepreneurship skills and Green Skills. Basic Information and Communication Technology skills were also covered on day 2. Day 3 & 4 were about Trade specific skills and lab activities which included overview of Python programming, HTML, RDBMS etc. On day 5 teacher trainees were divided into groups of 6 and had to come up with a plan forward to implement at school.

One significant observation was the lack / insufficient availability of computing resources essential for IT – ITeS trade in many of the schools which was flagged by the teachers repeatedly, addressing which is a continuous ongoing work. During the activity where teacher trainees had to come up with plan forward, one significant observation was how teachers despite insufficient resources figured out how to reach to the students with whatever is available. The video below is a snippet of charts designed by teacher trainees in less than an hour to reach to students with concepts using charts.

 

Way Forward Activity Team – 8 Vocational Teachers Training Vijayawada