I am Jayashree Mahakalkar from School of Scholars , Beltarodi, Nagpur. We have started implementing CSpathshala activities in Meghe Group of Schools from June 2018. At the beginning of the session 2018-19,our management has introduced one of the interesting activity in our Mathematics curriculum and that was CSpathshala. Our Resource centre arranged workshop to train the teachers for implementation of CSpathshala activities. After that training, we understood the ways of conduction of activities using provided Lesson plans, presentations and worksheets of different modules of CSpathshala. We have conducted various activities of CSpathshala throughout the session. Students were eager to do the activities and solve worksheets. They enjoyed a lot. It really helped students to develop their computational thinking skills through various activities and puzzles.
The first conference for Computational Thinking skills through CSpathshala was held in Pune on 20th April 2019. In the month of March, we came to know about the first conference of CSpathshala. We four teachers planned to attend the conference from our school. We were eager to know about the implementation and experiences of teachers about CSpathshala in different schools all over the India.
We learned to correlate CS activity with day to day life. The session conducted by Mugdha Madam in which she has given example of finding shortest routé ( To visit 5 manache ganpati) This activity enhance mapping skill of students. It was very interesting to know that preprimary students enjoyed making algorithms for different daily activities.
Mrs. Geeta Ghormade , Head of the Resource centre of Meghe group of schools, shared the experience about the implementation of CSpathshala in the curriculum of Mathematics in all MGS Schools. Mr. Vipul Shah conducted a brainstorming fun activity which turned into a mathematical pattern. Such type of fun activities can be conducted in classrooms.
Learning disability redefined as learning differently. The highlight of conference was the children with special needs also develop their thinking skill through CS activity. Schools in tribal area implemented CS activities without presentation due to lack of facilities. The teachers from Mundra, Gujarat inspired us by sharing their experience of implementation of CS activities in the schools of other than English medium (Gujarati and Kutchi local language). The goal of CSPathshala is to develop computational thinking skills through various activities but it doesn’t mean that you should show the presentation and then conduct the activity. Language and facilities for presentation should not be the barrier for implementation of CSPathshala.
We will mo
tivate teachers to be a part of next CS conference to share their experiences and get new ideas to conduct the activities.
Best wishes to the organizing committee of CSpathshala for such a wonderful and fruitful conference.
Jayashree Mahakalkar
(Mathematics teacher)
(School of scholars, Beltarodi)