Dinesh Kamath's news item 'VHS of Kharghar adopts new technology for the benefit of students' that was published in Newsband

VHS of Kharghar adopts new technology for the benefit of students

By Dinesh Kamath

KHARGHAR: Vishwajyot High School also known as 'VHS', is a private school in Kharghar.

Vishwajyot High School is a part of the Shevantabai & Shankarrao Foundation. The school was founded in 2004 with only kindergarten classes. Gradually, more classes were introduced. At present the school has classes from Kindergarten to Class 10.School's philosophy is " To make students independent learner by teaching them how to earn".

The school logo is a torch and a nib. The nib is a symbol of education and the torch denotes that VHS students will illumine the world with their wisdom and creativity.

The school is affiliated to the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CICSE). It is a co-educational day school with around 700 students located opposite Central Park Kharghar Sector-20.

Vishwajyot High School encourages the students to take part in various co-curricular activities held in school such as music, dance, arts and sports. The campus of Vishwajyot High School is equipped with infrastructural facilities such as class rooms with teaching aids, library, computer labs, science labs and playground.

It was built to address the problems in the Indian education system by espousing: Virtual One on One Coaching, English Communication Skills, Integrated Learning, Experiential Learning and School Goals.

The shoool believes in making the students integrated individuals so that they will be better equipped to: analyse real life situation and arrive at conclusion, handle any situation in life effectively, speak eloquently, be self-confident and creative, be aware of the environment and its conservation, and be good global citizen, while rooted in Indian culture.

VHS is often in news for their unique teaching method and academic achievements.

At Vishwajyot High School, Kharghar, teachers pay particular attention on students who are struggling and help them master the topics. They analyze the student’s problems with the help of technology. The management of the school has been trying this experiment since last three years. The school tries to know not only whether the student understands the subject but also tries to find out whether the student is able to know its concepts. The school doesn’t believe in just conferring on the students a A, B or C grade but it shows the students the route along which they should go in order to improve themselves.

In this school, the students are taught to focus on the weaker areas rather they just study hard. The school believes that a child is finding a subject difficult only because the child has not been able to pick up the basics of the subject. Hence total attention is paid in helping the child to pick up the basics after which the child begins to find the subject easy to follow.

This is a new system of education and it is called the data-driven education. This education involves data-driven decision making (DDM) and this system is become very popular all over the world. This system consists of collecting and analyzing of various types of data which gives a clear picture of where the student is lagging behind and where he or she excels.

Through the system, one can judge the performance of students question-wise. Here both the strong and weak points of the students are highlighted after extremely careful analysis of the datas relating to the student is collected. This system helps the teachers a lot since they get the clear picture of the strong and weak points of the students owing to which they come to know as to which areas have to be addressed.

This experiment has yielded good results. Students benefited considerably by this system and they have been able to score very well in the exams. There has been tremendous improvement in the performances of the students after this system was adopted. The school is so much excited about the excellent result that this system has produced that it wants to take the technology to the next level by making it available online.

The school is designing a software in which the data will be fed owing to which the child’s progress not just in exams and class tests, but also with their regular homework can be ascertained. The school will be providing login ids and passwords to the students and staff, wherein students will get the opportunities to answer the questions and teachers will find it very easy to have the full statistical data about the students’ performances in the examinations. Thus this is a kind of online technology and shows promise of benefiting the students considerably.