The UBQOOL Blog

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Making education more accessible and fun for everyone

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Experience at http://UBQOOL.com

Experience at http://UBQOOL.com and follow us at http://ubqool.tumblr.com and http://www.facebook.com/UBQOOL

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Making education more accessible and more meaningful

When we started with the idea of UBQOOL, we were not trying to solve the problem of education. Rather, we were trying to solve the problem of social fragmentation.


We believe that education is the fundamental need for the progress of a nation. We don't mean education as schooling or degrees. We mean education as 'learning', 'knowing' and 'doing'.


The current problems created by our educational system (as we see it):


1. Inequality - A child, who has done no wrong, faces the prospect of his/her future being determined by the school he/she manages to get admission to. In most of the cases, the choice of the school is not the issue, whether the schooling can be afforded is the first problem. This inequality leads to a kind of discrimination that fundamentally alters the future of the child's life, besides the lives of the parents and siblings. This inequality is far more discriminatory than economic, religious and ethnic discrimination. If we solve this very problem of inequality of learning, we would be able to reduce the incidence of economic and other discrimination.





2. Sameness - Our school systems are designed to address children as if they were on an assembly line in a factory. We address a group of students as if they all are designed to learn in the same way. This couldn't be further from the truth. Each one of us has an unique learning style. We even have unique strengths and abilities. Yet, we invest million of dollars into our system which is designed to evaluate each student against a set 'standard'. By the time a child finishes school, we would have instilled in him/her the need to be 'same', not 'different'. A child lost to our factory systems.





At UBQOOL we are developing a learning platform which addresses both the above issues - Inequality and Sameness.


If you believe in the same, do reach out to us. We would love to hear from you. 


contactus@ubqool.com

Friday, January 7, 2011

Why we need to rethink our notion of a physical classroom

India's fixation with the physical classroom
Nalanda remains in the consciousness  of every Indian as a symbol of what a place of learning was 1000s of years ago.


Ever since, we have seen the evolution of education in terms of pedagogy, curriculum, delivery and use of tools and techniques. What has remained static is our notion of the centre of education - the classroom.


The classroom became increasingly accessible over the years, leading to the feasibility of the notion of a day-scholar. A significant change from the days of Nalanda. The growth of transportation was the prime catalyst in this evolution. On a similar note, the evolution of information technology (IT) should have made the physical classroom less relevant. But that is not what we have seen emerge. Instead of leveraging IT to evolve further, we are still stuck with the day-scholar and the physical classroom. IT is just being pushed into the existing physical classroom. 


A smart-board doesn't a smart-student make
The more your look around, the more you'll find organizations engaged in the 'education revolution' in India. Many of these organizations are simply taking a mashup of hi-end electronics, computers and multimedia content to the existing physical classrooms.


No one has statistics to prove what difference does a smart-classroom have on student performance. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most students benefit more from their own use of IT and the internet, rather than the brief exposure to smart-classrooms. Yet, you have a multi-million dollar smart-classroom industry thriving in a country like India. A country where we struggle to even achieve basic enrollment rates for a large part of the population.


Being taught vs. learning
The teacher in the classroom remains the centre of the learning universe? WRONG! 
The teacher is no longer the sole medium of learning for a scholar. The world-wide web changed that many moons ago. True that many in India still do not have internet access, but that's an easier problem to solve in the near future.


The biggest difference between scholars  with access to internet vs. those without, is the power of information. This power has translated into a significant edge in terms of learning and education. Most evidence suggests that students who use the internet for supplementary educational inputs, surpass their peers in performance. This does signal a significant shift in the role of the classroom teacher. The classroom teacher has to move away from being the medium of delivery, to being the facilitator of the learning process. A learning process which uses the physical classroom only as a congregation venue for peers, but is not the sole centre of learning.


Most students today are smarter than their parents. No doubt! By that logic, most students are also likely to be smarter than their teachers....more access to information, more savvy with information search, multitasking etc. Now when such is the case, how much interest or respect will the student carry for the classroom and the teacher in the classroom?


A contrarian agenda for action - Part 1

  • Instead of finding ways (including funds) for building more physical classrooms, why not take education out of the confines of the physical space? Why not take education to the doorsteps of every scholar?
  • Instead of making education and learning teacher-centric, why not make it student-centric? Who says that every student in the same class has the same learning ability and has to be taught in one uniform way?
  • Why can't we make education content free for everyone? 
Join us at www.ubqool.com or contactus@ubqool.com