CSpathshala Team in partnership with Rotary Club of Pimpri conducted a Training of Master Trainers for 50 teachers from Government schools from Khed Taluka at the Panchayat Samiti, Rajgurunagar on 5th October 2018. Majority were all subject teachers teaching classes 3-8.
The training began with an activity on “Guess my birthdate?” which made the teachers think on how best they could eliminate maximum numbers and guess the right answer in a minimum number of questions. Applying their concepts in Maths on odd/even numbers, prime/non-prime numbers and rules of divisibility got the teachers interested and they in turn conducted the activity.
Nitin Dhamale, President, Rotary Club of Pimpri along with Sureshbhai the Sabhapati have been instrumental in working towards Bringing Computational Thinking to the Government Schools in Khed taluka. Nitin shared that after seeing the positive change in problem solving skills in the students of the urban Pune schools after the introduction of the Computational Thinking, he felt that there was a need to work with the government schools to help students develop a systematic approach to problem solving.
The main objective of the CSPathshala training was to motivate the teachers to teach computing as a science through enhanced understanding on why Computational Thinking should be taught in schools
- Get trained on problem solving and computational thinking. Learn more about topics such as, decomposition, patterns, abstraction, algorithms, analysis and programming with day to day examples
- Build familiarity with CSpathshala teaching aids
- Engage in interesting activities on the above topics
BDO,Indira shared that as these schools have students from rural background they miss out the opportunity to do well at the various entrance exams for engineering, medicine and other competitive exams. Sharing her own experience of preparing for the MPSC exams she said that, “A separate paper on mental ability has been included in these exams and students face a lot of difficulty in attempting these questions which require logical reasoning. Our students lose out these opportunities as they are not trained in logical reasoning. Teaching the CSpathshala curriculum at our schools will help student develop problem solving and logical thinking at an early age. We should work together in implementing this curriculum.” Taking the process ahead Indira said that, “CSpathshala team would train the Master trainers who in turn should train the teachers from the 403 schools in Khed taluka. Also this is the first pilot project in rural Government schools in Maharashtra let us work together in making Khed the first taluka teaching Computational Thinking!” Indira also said that the teachers are the ones who will be instrumental in taking this ahead to the students.
