The V.C. on the topic, ‘Community, Faith and Values’ held among ‘Our Lady of Peace School, Antipolo’ in Philippines, ‘NarikSri School’ SMA, Indonesia and ‘Podar World School, Sherkhi, Vadodara’ in Gujarat, India, was in every respect a documentary of sixty minutes on the rich confluence of all cultures, spearheaded by future generation in striving to build a world of ’harmonious coexistence.’ The V.C. started at 9:20 a.m. with the Facilitator Mr. Jean greeting the students of all the schools and listing out the rules to carry out an unhindered Skype session.
The first question posed by Mr. Jean was on ‘What community means to you & which community you belong to?’ It was responded by a student of Podar World School, Sherkhi by foremost greeting everyone with their usual ‘Podar Pranam’ and then responded that, she believes that community is a place where people of all religion reside together with harmony and added that she takes pride to be in such a community. The same was supplemented with other responses that community according to them is a place to dwell with respect to each other and that humanity is the only community they would love to belong to. The students also mentioned about the unique cultural diversity of India. A Philippine student emphasized on unity in society with a common goal that benefit all equally. One of the students responded that community to her was a group of people who preach love & respect & which reflects the identity of the society. The students from NarikSri School, Indonesia, expressed that community is like the anatomy of the human body. On being asked about the festivals that they celebrate & their meaning & significance, the students in Philippines talked about festivals like ‘Happy Philippinos’ & ‘Christmas’ to be one of the most significant ones as they involve a lot of singing and dancing. A few festivals were also mentioned. Students from PWS, Sherkhi joyfully expressed their likings for various festivals like ‘Holi’, ‘Diwali’, ‘Navratri’, ‘Pongal’ & ‘Chhat Puja’ to be some of the most awaited festivals observed and also articulated the significance of the festivals.
In Reflection at the last quarter of the V.C. in which they were to reflect upon the learning of the day, the students from NarikSri were quite elated to have a heart to heart talk with the students of Podar World School, as they got to learn about the Indian community and the festivals. They reflected on beautiful values of Indian tradition. The students of Podar World School on the other hand shared that they felt enriched having shared the Indian values and having known about the Philippines and their culture especially about their festivals & their beliefs. They have also learned the importance of community being a representative of the society.
During the post session Principal Ms. Preeta Pillai posed a few thought provoking questions as to what learning they had from the video conference, and advised them to share their experiences with their juniors, peers and their parents as well.
V.C. on Paytm with Teachers of Podar schools of Vadodara.
Around 2:40p.m., the V.C of teachers teaching Social Science, Environmental Science, Mathematics and Science with the Vice President of Paytm, Mr. Saurabh Jain started in different schools of Podar in Vadodara. After the introduction by the teachers themselves from the different schools, Mr. Jain said that his purpose of having such a V.C. is to promote entrepreneurship as a career in schools and how he is planning to come out with effective pedagogies for teaching and learning in schools through their 'Build for India' venture. He said that he wanted the students of our country to shoulder many of its problems and the need is only to direct them in the correct directions as to how to solve the problems as they well equipped with knowledge due wide exposure through different media. He talked about Multiple Intelligence which is focused in lower classes in designing of pedagogy and about the experience of starting Open classrooms to help students solve their problems. He wanted the teachers to come out with the problems in teaching. He said that there is a lot of focus on rote learning in schools, which is indeed one of the problems. To this teachers agreed and they added that such a problem is because the methodology is theoretical based rather than giving pragmatic learning experiences to the learners. He agreed to this point and added that to make a child empowered, he or she has to be given autonomy (freedom of operation) that the method to be adopted for effective assimilation and learning of the content as no child could be controlled 100%. When teachers asked about how could curriculum be made more interesting, by making it more practical based than theoretical based, he responded that activities like mock parliament could be used to give learners first hand experiences of elections and voting, to which the teachers of all Podars responded in one voice that such learning experiences they have been given as our learners in classrooms and as they had been taking part in IMUN’s (International mock United Nations).
A teacher from Sherkhi asked 'Hasn't technology affected the reading habits of our children?' He said that it has certainly affected but with books designed on promoting knowledge through Multiple Intelligence, the problem has been taken cared of or solved to a great extent. The Principal of Sherkhi, Ms. Preeta Pillai suggested that ' Changes have to be brought out in the assessment system rather than the pedagogy as using the right pedagogy lies in the hands of the agile and alert teachers to get complete satisfaction of having done a service to their learners in the right sense. A teacher from Maneja expressed her wish that more Apps should be developed for imparting the contents of Social Science and English effectively as has been developed for teaching of Math and Science. Another teacher from Sherkhi asked that 'Isn't there a fear of students getting carried away by too much technology based teaching?' To this Mr. Saurabh said that students do get carried away but with revolutionary changes happening, one cannot be left behind, as our children are far advanced than grown ups. A teacher from Maneja asked that ' What could be done to solve the problem of negativity faced by our students from the society?' He agreed that negativity is certainly there but being in a heterogeneous society and with innovations happening every minute, the learners would themselves learnt to cope up with such attitudes. One of the Science teachers of Sherkhi said that he wanted his students to do more and learn but the time factor and funding as well as the paucity of suitable resources makes his attempts difficult, above all the dearth of knowledge to use the upcoming devices. At this Mr. Saurabh said that they would plan for a training program for the teachers in using the different Apps and he added that most of the devices could be procured from the Paytm malls.
Finally as the time was nearing to wind up, he said that he enjoyed talking to the students as well as their teachers and promised to make a visit to the schools in the near future to sort certain problems of the curriculum, though he added that there is a limitations to what he could do as the curriculum has been designed by the stakeholders of Education at the State and Central Boards. Finally our respected Principal, Ms Preeta Pillai posed a question which was in fact something overheard by her in one of their society 's meetings that ' Money if gets transferred to the wrong person by Paytm cannot be revived, and so its not a safe transaction App'. She raised her query about it and wanted to know about the Apps credibility. Mr. Saurabh assured her that such cases have happened and people have got their money back. They are still working on it and would soon come out with fruitful solutions.
V.C. on PAYTM with students of Podar World Schools (Sherkhi, Sama and Maneja branches) of Vadodara.
It was a great privilege to have an encounter with established entrepreneurs such as Mr. Saurabh, the Vice President at Paytm. He is heading the 'Paytm - Build for India' program and also has an active role in start-up products, developer relations, social impact / CSR, education and training within Paytm. The V.C. was scheduled with the purpose of knowing how much our students know about the initiative that has revolutionized money transactions in the recent past and also to enlighten them with its advantages and the challenges one would face during startups in its preliminary stage, especially for those who wish to become young, dynamic and enterprising entrepreneurs in future. Around 1:15 p.m. the V.C. started. Soon after the introduction by our Principal, Ms Preeta Pillai and briefing about the school, followed by other Principals, the students present introduced themselves from Sherkhi, Sama and Maneja and then introduction by Saurabh Jain himself, the program kick started.
The very first question posed by Mr. Saurabh as to 'What is Paytm?' Our students (of Sherkhi foremost and other schools) responded accurately in their own way and understanding. Then Mr. Saurabh told them that his organization 'Build for India' wishes that more and more students aspire to become entrepreneurs and join his organization and be of help to the commoners to relieve them of many of their difficulties. He then posed questions as 'Whether they knew any Computer languages?' Have they tried to make any games using their knowledge of computer programming?' Have they heard the term' Scratch' in Computers etc? Our students of Podar, Sherkhi who were very prompt in responding, answered to all the questions as all of them were familiar with the terminologies of Computer and had learned them too, followed by the students of other branches. Then one of our students from class IX, Kumari Bhargavi Jaiswal, posed the question, ' Is it easy to become a very successful entrepreneur?' as she had read about Mr. Vijay Sharma, (a person with a humble beginning) yet aspired to become an entrepreneur and who is in fact the brain behind Paytm, and about his struggles and hurdles at the initial stage. As an answer to her question he said that provided one has the determination and the courage to persist and persevere, and then success would definitely be with the one. He then talked about our 'Father of Nation', Mahatma Gandhi whose sole intention behind coining the word and the initiative 'Swaraj' was to empower our young generation but unfortunately and even after so many years of Independence the common men are not empowered. Though the problem of 'Black money' still persists, yet with the introduction of Paytm transactions, to some extent the problem has been solved. When Mr. Saurabh Jain suggested our students to read more of business related books and about Stock Exchange Markets to know about the nitty gritty of business and its related activities, our learners said that they indeed have first hand experiences of carrying out mini business ventures such as 'Enterprise Challenge' and 'BBA' wherein they shared their experience of being adjudged as one of the top ten business venture out of 105 participants across Gujarat. The other schools of Podar too shared their experiences of having tried their hands at such ventures. At this Mr. Saurabh not only congratulated them but also added that 'the schools of Podar already has entrepreneurs in making' Then our students posed questions as 'Does Paytm employ people?', 'How did Paytm gain trust of people by replacing cash transaction?', ' What is the back up plan for Paytm if the internet is not working?', Did luck play a major role in the startup Paytm?', How was the word Paytm coined?', Does the demography play any role in a startup?''What is the annual turnover of Paytm?' etc Mr. Saurabh responded to all the questions either directly or by giving examples from their experiences. Besides he said that no initiative has become successful without the brains of our Indian engineers and that is the reason for their demands in foreign countries too. He said Paytm is now taking its technology to one of the most advanced countries in the world, Japan and it is for the first time that things are happening the other way round. He talked about Artificial Intelligence and that when our present generation would grow up, everything would be working with the help of Artificial Intelligence. He said that the coming generation have to be agile and adaptable enough to cope up with the dynamics of the world and a key to this is to become a lifelong learner. To the question ' How are they different from other company or Startups?' He said that they are different in technology and their focus is more on relieving the common men from their woes, they have interesting experiences and interesting technology and very soon they will be using AI to provide loans to customers. He said as humans are good story tellers and designers they can definitely become good entrepreneurs too as they are basically producers. As the time was running out, Mr. Saurabh finally wished the children all success in their life and promised to meet them personally in their school and have a tete-a tete for enlightening them further.
