Bringing Computational Thinking, a 21st century skill to schools: A collaborative effort

Rotary Club of Pimpri and CSpathshala have worked together since January 2017 towards Bringing Computational Thinking to PCMC schools under the Rotary Vocational Teachers Training Project. Computational Thinking is a 21st century skill that prepares students to participate creatively in the digital age.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) India started a education initiative, CSpathshala  (www.cspathshala.org) in 2016, to teach computing as a science in all schools. The key objectives are to popularise Computational Thinking and influence education policy to enable its introduction into the curricula. Over 1,00,000 students in government and private schools in both rural and urban areas across 11 states are piloting the CT curriculum in English, Gujarati, Hindi and Marathi.

The consistent efforts since January 2017 by the Rotary volunteers with Ms. Vibha Zutshi, Mr. Bimal Rawat and Ms. Radha Kumar taking the lead have led to reaching out to 30+ schools in PCMC and  200+ Heads of institutions and teachers. Milestones achieved through this partnership in a short span of one and half years is all thanks to the encouraging role of leadership from the Rotary and Principals and Management of the schools.

Accomplishments   

  • Hosted CSpathshala Awareness Workshop  in March 2017 with participation of 100+ Principals, Teachers and Rotarians from 20+ schools
  • Organised Principal’s meet with 50+ Principals, Vice Principals and Trustees in April 2017
  • 14 schools implementing CSpathshala curriculum with an outreach of 11000+ students
  • Conducted 3 teachers training workshops in June, August and December 2017  with 70+ teachers trained on Computational Thinking
  • Regular feedback visits  and handholding support by Rotary mentors  and CSpathshala volunteers to address problems/challenges faced by schools in the transformation process of adopting a new curriculum.
  • Excellent feedback shared by students, parents and teachers on the CSpathshala curriculum
  • Creation of Community of teachers, an opportunity to interact, share experiences and adopt innovative ideas.

GGIS Principal, Ms. Bharti Bhagwani, shared positive feedback from both parents and students. Initially implementing the curriculum required some effort on the part of the teachers, now the students are comfortable with the teaching aids that the role of the teacher has changed to “a facilitator” especially in the higher grades.

The Stepping Stone School Principal, Ms. Ritu Mendiratta adopted the activity based approach and encouraged teachers to capture pictures of activities. A presentation of the same was shared at the Feedback workshop on creative implementation of the curriculum which has motivated the other teachers.

The Principal, Mrs. Mukherjee, Christeria school, Pune shared that it was the teachers own fears of adopting the new curriculum which was a roadblock. The teachers training helped overcome these fears and then there was no turning back with students enjoying the learning experience.Students participated in a Scratch programming competition and won accolades and are keen to move ahead to Python.

Going ahead the Rotary Club of Pimpri and CSpathshala will continue to provide support to the schools, increase outreach to both urban and rural schools to equip teachers on Computational Thinking and work towards preparing children for the digital age!

Awareness Workshop @GGIS School March 2018            Principals Meet @Rotary Club of Pimpri April 2018

Teachers Training @City Pride, Nigdi, June 2017    Feedback and Follow up workshops August and December 2017

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