Hyderaba:Online is now mainline education.  City Kids are doing wonders in the new normal.

Can you imagine, they competed in some global virtual contests, emerged victorious and won prizes? Under these testing times students produced a nukkad naatak, virtually, following all the government restrictions, on Corona Safety from the comfort of their homes.

Have any parents ever imagined that their wards at this very young age will participate in global webinars and interact with children from across the globe and share his/her views?

These and many possibilities were made possible by the city’s St. Peter’s High School at Bowenpally, Secunderabad.

Amidst hue and cry about online education and problems associated with it, we made digital learning during these troubled times a very joyful, fun and happy learning experience for our children, shares Dr.Suvarna Kuppa, Principal, St.Peter’s High School

We have been challenging the challenges and pushing ourselves hard to produce some nice digital learning experience for kids.

In these pandemic times, our students have exhibited skills in multiple platforms across the globe and won laurels. Undeterred by the adverse environment, they showcased their best talent and proved that nobody nor any situation can stop a determined person.

Prakalya, Grade 4 participated in ISRO’s Cyberspace Competition and presented a model of SLV. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has organised ‘ISRO Cyberspace Competitions 2020’ (ICC -2020) to nurture the young minds

Ms.Niharika , Grade 9 won the best delegate award in UNEP(United Nations Environment Programme) as a delegate of Belgium with a cash prize of 3000 in a national inter-school MUN (Model United Nations) conference where the judging panel mainly consisted Editors of TOI and Hindu newspapers. She was asked to draft resolutions and also speak on topics ranging from environmental issues to COVID 19 crisis in the moderated caucus. NHSMUN is the world’s largest and most prestigious Model UN conference for secondary school students.

Uditi , Grade 10 won special appreciation for her position paper as a delegate of UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council) while Ms. Anusha from Grade 7 won laurels for her online presence as a delegate.

Some of the novel initiatives introduced by the school these days include Eye Yoga. It is the set of specific exercises that engage all of the ocular muscles that support eye movement. These exercises help improve the flexibility in these muscles and help students focus better. Common eye yoga exercises include: deliberately and repeatedly looking up and down, then left and right etc, explained Dr Suvarna.

We celebrated International Yoga online.

Another important aspect is sensitising children about cybersecurity. Now, with lessons shifting online, schools are becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Around the world, schools and their students have fallen victim to cyber-attacks. Keeping this in mind we have adequately educated our children and their parents too were about the same.

To avoid fatigue and pressure learning, the online classes are placed so well that there is a long break between the sessions so that children can cope up.

To top these … students have come up with a novel idea. A team of 8th graders has scripted and created a nukkad naatak in Hindi to educate public on CORONA PANDEMIC. The beauty of the activity lies in the fact that no two performers practised together. Maintaining social distancing norms, the practice and recording were done completely online.

We have adopted a concept called “Phygital”(a combination of physical and digital) learning. There has been a good balance between these two.

For primary students, in our initiative Wow Wednesdays, we have taken up online fun activities with parents that inculcate the norm of family time apart from offline learning.

Further, we have gone many steps ahead by giving alternative assignments to challenge students’ HOTS’(Higher-order thinking skills) HOTS is a concept popular in the West, more so in American education. HOTS include synthesizing, analyzing, reasoning, comprehending, application.

Some of these HOTS assignments include, Demonstrations, Debates; 1-minute presentations; Group Discussions; Open Book questions; Solve crossword puzzles; Participate in Online quizzes; Construct Model/ Device related to concept learnt; Discus some questions posed by a mentor or any query raised by any student; Write slogans / create any poem on the concept learnt; Create games on the concept learnt; Activity Based Questions; Open Book questions

The School gives a lot of importance in inculcating Effective Questioning by students. Questioning makes students involve more, becomes interactive, and develops listening skills among many.