Surprise Boxes And Un-building Walls - Ashish Rajpal

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Iam here to give you one more version ofwhat we have learned. I am a student ofthis domain and a lot younger in this craft

than most of you. The only advantage I mayhave is that, because our work is so widespread,I have the privilege of meeting thousands ofteachers, school heads and children, whichgives a certain perspective. I also have thehonour of working with a team of people whoare very committed to this domain, and so Iget to learn every day.

I have chosen to title this presentation orsharing as “No Walls.” The word ‘wall’ hasmany connotations, in education and insociety. I don’t know how many of you haveheard the classic Pink Floyd number, “Anotherbrick in the wall”? Around the time that thesong was made, a very famous Hindi film wasreleased as well, called “Deewar.” So it’s ironic,that this play of deewar and wall has been inour society or in the larger domain ofeducation for a long time. We are certainlyoverdue by a few decades now, when we say,“Let’s break down some of these walls andstart looking at what is inside this.”

I have come to you today with four boxes andone of them has a surprise. I’m going to arguethat the super structure of schools – buildings,gates, boundary walls, swimming pools, plasmascreens, lots of marble, and nice desks – whilebeing important, are not nearly as important assomething else. I am going to call that“something else” the elements of the school.

SuRpRiSe BoxeS Andun-Building WAllS

The structures of schools - buildings, gates, swimming pools, plasma screens,flooring, nice desks – are not nearly as important as the 'four elements' of theschool, argues Ashish Rajpal.

Illustration by Amruta Patil

MF16 Pg 29-35 Rajpal:Layout 2 11/07/12 8:33 AM

I suggest that like these four boxes,there are four elements that we shouldre-commit ourselves to. While there isnothing new and spectacular aboutthese elements, these are the fourthings I would spend my time andenergy on, if I were a principal, schoolowner, trustee, government official, orthe decision maker of spending lakhsand crores of rupees.

The four elements are: (1) Process, theprocess by which we teach and learneveryday in school; (2) Clarity on theskills we want children to learn whenthey come to our school (a processwhich is not informed by that claritycould actually be quite a wastefulprocess); (3) Data, or informationabout our learners; and (4) Resources,by which I do not mean infrastructuralresources but those that you use in theclassroom – pencils, erasers, chalk,dusters, manipulatives, maybesomething using technology – theresources children use in the process of learning.

The most classic process in schoolsaround our country and around theworld, is the lecture. This is wheresomeone stands on a pedestal andtalks, and everybody else listens. Thelecture process has survived severalhundred years of formal schooling, soone could say, “Why not more of that?”

By adopting the lecture method, weexpect almost all our students to have acertain skill, that in fact most don’t.

They are then considered “stupid”! Thatparticular skill is the skill of recall.Someone said, “Teachers may notunderstand the meaning ofcomprehension; they may confuse itfor recall.”

Recall has immense social sanction inour society. The Brahmins have beentelling us for several thousand years thatif you cannot recall scripture, you can’tpass the very first test. Actuallyunderstanding scripture is only a minor,secondary detail; the ability to recall it isgiven primary importance. Further, whathappens after exams? Children arecrowding to see what they scored on themarksheets. Marks are the ultimate datacode in our society. Even an uneducatedmother in a village can say ‘Yeah, howmany marks did you get?’, irrespective ofwhat interpretation she may make of it.

Finally, we do have resources. Even thepoorest schools in our country haveresources. Of these, traditionaltextbooks and paper form the largestpercentage. It’s a big business, both forthe government as well as privateinstitutions.

Even at this very moment, hours andhours and hours of lectures are beingdisseminated, children are busyrecalling, recalling, and recalling, marksare being given distributed and handedout, and billions of reams of paper arebeing printed.

Now, if this is the whole idea you hadof how these four elements were to

manifest in your school, then it’shappening anyway. However, let meadd a slight spin to this whole thing.Suppose I wasn’t talking about thismanifestation of the four elements?

For example, when we say that wewant a process in our school, we arenot talking about just any process.School is not a furniture factory or asausage line. We are talking aboutchildren and learning, which is a reallycomplex area and subject. Any processthat we put in place must be able todemonstrate that all those little humanbeings are going through a learningprocess.

Or consider the second element, skills.We can glorify almost any skill butsometimes for the wrong reason. Forinstance, till 25 or so years ago, neathandwriting was a very highly valuedskill. In fact, as recent as 40 years ago,some people were scribes – their jobwas to note down things neatly so thatothers could read it. One can onlyimagine what the value of a scribemust have been before the printingpress was invented! However, in themodern age, even though that skill isuseful, many others are consideredmore valuable.

‘Destinic’ is the destiny of a skill in thelifespan of the child. It is to answer thequestion, “Will this skill ever have anyuse?” So, if a 15-year-old were to spendtime learning how to use a 1980typewriter, would that skill really haveany use in the modern world?

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By adopting the lecturemethod, we expect almost allour students to have a certainskill, that in fact most don’t.They are then considered“stupid”! That particular skill isthe skill of recall. Someonesaid, “Teachers may notunderstand the meaning ofcomprehension; they mayconfuse it for recall.”

1. Basic Skills

2. professionSpecific Skills

3. “Higher order”Meta-Competencies

4. Character!

destinicSkills

inspiringResources

learnfulprocess

destinicSkills

i-Actiondata

Subjective Objective

Custom

Universal



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So, once we know that the process isLearnful and the skills are Destinic,then we can be pretty sure we aredoing something right.

But how will we know for sure? It isnot enough for experts or school headsto say that the process and resourcesare useful. Data has to confirm it so.Further, the data has to be actionableby the user, which is the child.

This is what I call I-Action. Forexample, if you give me (as a student)the information that I have scored 83on 100, I now know that are about 80people above me. However, what is oneto do with this information?

Whereas, if you gave me thecorrections to some of the howlers Imay have made, I can correct myselfand I would have learned something indoing so. So if I’m mispronouncing aword and you correct me, that is data Ican do something with.

If you tell me that my basic numberconcepts are okay but that I am weakin algebra, then I get a sense of what Ineed to work on. A teacher is like acoach guiding a cricket team. If I amconstantly getting beaten and then thecoach tells me, “Oh there’s a big gapbetween your bat and pad. Hold thebat closer,” then I can do something tobetter my play. Just being told one isbatting badly is not very useful. Beingtold where the problem is and how tostrengthen one’s weakness, is.

Therefore, from an assessmentstandpoint, a massive shift inperspective is necessary. We need tostart asking whether the data beinggenerated can be more useful to the learner.

Then we consider this big battlearound Resources. Can the resourcesnot be about the core of what the workis? After all, that is not a resource; thatis the work. Instead, can the functionof a resource be to inspire one to takethe work to the next level? Only theresources that can do so, are worth it.

Now, let me elaborate some of theseabstract ideas and make them moretangible. Let’s start with the first box,the Learning Process. There isoverwhelming evidence that there isnothing like a good process running ina school. Unless you are lucky enoughto have a school which looks like aBollywood movie, where everybody is a movie star, looks twenty one yearsold, is beautiful, is an inspiring teacher, and works 18 hours a day. In that world maybe the word, process,is a corrupt word.

In reality, we have 300 million schoolgoing children in our country, and 6-7million teachers. Over the last decade,our own work in education has almostexclusively focused on demystifying

the process of what a teacher should bedoing. One can never demystify all thespiritual powers of a great teacher, butperhaps we can demystify some of it.

Those of you who are familiar with thisor those who came last year heard thisand the XSEED schools, know thisinside out. We’re just asking for fivethings to happen over and over again,formally or informally. Can there beclarity to the child on why one islearning, what one is learning and whatis it that the teacher wants one to learn?

Can the teacher let the child try first,and just in case she cocks it up, can thechild try once more? After the childhas tried and re-tried it, can theteacher and the child get together and

have a conversation around whathappened? A conversation in whichthe child speaks first. A conversationwhere we can all share in a civilisedfashion, even a group conversation of avery high order. That’s the heart andsoul of teaching in this view – theability to conduct this conversation.

There seems to be a slight rift on goinghard versus going soft. We areunequivocally of the view that anyonewho needs to go get a living has to beon the hard side. You need to becompetitive and to do well. You don’tneed to be uncivilised or uncaring orunkind or ungrateful, but you need tobe a performing horse. When westarted, I think we were a littleapologetic for holding this view, but nomore. We are talking about hard-corewinners, and for that we require rigourand practice.

In addition, there needs to be a clearway of measuring the process. Marksare fine, as well as unit tests and on-going assessments. However, thereneeds to be a clear standard. At thecost of repeating myself, much of whatwe have discovered has existed in thelast 200 years of education and in ourown country. It all moves in thisdirection.

And now the second box. A greatprocess is geared to preparing one forlife. Which implies that one needs toknow what it is that one will be doing.I’ve been giving this area a fair amountof thought in the last year and I’d liketo focus on one particular area.

Before that however, let us look at theso-called skills that are now gainingcurrency. The basic skills of reading,writing, and arithmetic haven’t goneout of fashion. Whether you are goodat English or not, or good at Math ornot, there is a fair amount ofagreement that you need to pick these up.

The next set of skills are professionspecific, especially as you go into thehigher classes. For example, if youchoose accounts as your area, you need

1. “What am i trying tolearn and why?”

2. “let me try... re-try”

3. “What happenned?...let's think, let'sshare”

4. “let's get better andbetter”

5. “let's measure...how did i do”

learningprocess


to have the ability to balance books,which you can either do or you can’t.There is no soft middle path about this;it’s fairly binary. As the number ofprofessions open up and as this comesmore and more into schooling, I thinkschools are going to become more andmore open to this.

‘Profession’ is accepted in our society.The moment you say the word‘vocation’, people say “Oh, oh! That’s alittle bit lower class.” However, in thevocabulary I am using, actually they aresynonymous.

Then there is HEARTS – HigherOrder Thinking Skills – which CBSEhas popularised. I am grateful for thisnew vocabulary because it at leastdraws attention to aspects otherwiseneglected.

I choose to call them merely HigherOrder, because they are not necessarilyonly about thinking but may involveother skills as well – social skills,emotional skills, etc. I also call themmeta-competencies. The word ‘meta’means ‘your awareness about yourawareness’.

So for instance, meta-skills is theability to formulate an argument, orthe ability to question or inquire,competencies that are highly valued inthe workplace. Children are notexplicitly trained in this area in schoolsnecessarily, though you may have anoccasional group work or do a project.However, there is a huge movementaround the world towards this. There isa huge opportunity to build these skillsin the areas of teacher development aswell.

Then there is a fourth area thatiDiscoveri is beginning to take moreand more interest in. This is what istraditionally called ‘character’.Character in education is coming backwith a big bang. For the last 20-30years, it had gone out of fashion.

However, in western literature andthought, the question now emergingamongst practitioners is, “Are marks

necessarily the best predictor of successin life?” Then the question is, “If notthis, then what? What are we missing?”And a phenomenal amount of work ishappenning on this.

A couple of months ago, there was anarticle in The New York Times aboutresearch happening in schools around

character. Several famous names werementioned, including the University ofPennsylvania and a person calledMartin Seligman. At iDiscoveri, werespect Martin Seligman’s work andwe’ve been following it for severalyears.

A very fancy new York School calledRiverdale and a very low end schoolchain called KIP. All these are areAmerican institutions have a lot to toteach us. I went and visited all threeinstitutions some months ago. I metthe people working in this area, and I'dlike to share some of my learnings with you.

There is a growing consensus that testscores are not predicting the success ofstudents. Success includes jobs theyget, how long they stay in a job, their

personal relationships, so on and so forth.

There is also a growing consensus that,as one of the researchers at theUniversity of Pennsylvania says,character is almost as important asintellect. I don’t think anyone wouldhave a philosophical problem with this.However, the question is: “What ischaracter?” This is where they havedone a lot of work for the last decadeor more.

Without going into the long history ofwhat Martin Seligman did, suffice it tosay that today, after an enormousamount of work, character is beingtested along seven dimensions.

Most of these are self-explanatory.They are (1) Optimism, which is howyou tend to look at the future; (2) Zest,which is a more American word forenthusiasm – when something newstarts, you tend to be positive,energetic, excited or you’re like “Ohno!”; (3) Grit, which means the abilityto rebound from failure; (4) Curiosity,which is an interest in new anddifferent things; (5) Social Intelligence,the ability to conduct healthy,interpersonal relationships; (6)Gratitude, being grateful for the goodthings you have in life; and (7) Self-Control, the control over impulse, andas some people would argue, one of thethings that sets us apart from animals.

Of the seven, I have a particularinterest in two of them. From whateverinitial research I have looked at, whichis a fair amount, these two stand out.They are Grit and Self-Control. Canwe start assessing the ability to controlimpulse and the ability to reboundfrom failure amongst our young? Canwe systematically try and develop theseabilities in them?

This becomes a fairly controversial areabecause it could be that some childrenare genetically born in a certain wayand are more predisposed to theseabilities, whereas others may not be.


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This Business of “Character”n Test score not an accurate

predictor of human success

n “Character is at least as importantas intellect”

n Super 7: Optimism, Zest, Grit,Curiosity, Social Intelligence,Gratitude, Self Control

n Resilience = “overcoming failure” is a “function of social environments”

There is a growing consensusthat test scores are notpredicting the success ofstudents. Success includes jobsthey get, how long they stay in ajob, their personal relationships,so on and so forth.



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However, if society and school leadersstart recognising that these areessential constituents of a goodeducation, then irrespective of whetheryou are good at math or whether youare particularly gentle, you will need todevelop your grittiness. This is because,in real life, you will have to rebound.Over the coming months and years, weat iDiscoveri hope to invest a fairamount of time trying to understand where we want to go with this grit and self-control business.

Now here’s where I differ with some ofthe work emerging from the Universityof Pennsylvania. They are now buildinga separate curriculum to teach theseseven aspects. If the curriculum onehas to already navigate is like a pizza,this separate curriculum overloads thepizza with more toppings than it canhandle!

I say that these qualities are to be builtand highlighted within the alreadyexisting math, english, science, andsocial science instruction. I dare say, atthe cost of being called anexhibitionist, that that is what XSEEDis all about. Try–fail–recover–get up–rebound. In fact, many of these skillsare already inbuilt into what we aredoing.

However, since we are not measuringthese, we are neither able to give agood sense of it to the child or parent,nor have any predictive power ofwhether we are developing these ornot. Our focus so far has beenextremely scholastic, as it should havebeen, but the time has come to changethe clocks.

Let us move on to the third box, Data.A lot of this is common knowledge formany of us. The first ‘C’ is continuity,which refers to the everydayness ofschooling. This is why in XSEED, theWorksheet-ness, everyday filling, andeveryday feedback is extremelyimportant. The second ‘C’ isComprehensive. Are you only lookingat scholastic or academic skills? Or areyou looking at some of the higher

order competencies? I am nowreferring to character.

It is not just about mindlessly filling upassessment tools, but about having avery deep understanding of what it isand then very thoughtfully filling itout. It is a process that involves theteacher and the children, and thechildren’s ratings are matched with theteacher’s rating, so that there is a veryprecise sense of what is being learned.

The thing I want to emphasise todayis how usable the learn-o-meter is.Really fancy, sexy data that I can’t use isuseless to me. In the same way, suchdata would be useless to even a 7-year-old child, a 9-year-old child, or a 11-year-old child.

When I say “usable,” I think of at leastthree things. The first is, can weestablish a clear standard wherebychildren would know exactly what isexpected of them on a particularsubject and would be able to evaluatehow they are doing versus thisstandard? If one is not meeting thestandard, meeting the minimum

standard is fine and one can have moretime. The important thing is that thechild knows, and children are okaywith this feedback. It is the absence ofa standard which is confusing.

Second, can the data be developmentalin nature? Can it show the child whereshe was last quarter and where she isgoing to be in the next quarter? Whereis she this quarter? That’s whatXSEED's assessment tool, theLearnometerTM, is trying to do. It’s notperfect or completely there yet, but it is trying to move in the directionwhere it can produce thedevelopmental aspect as well.

This is important because, irrespectiveof whether the child is able to meet thestandard or is perhaps beating thestandard big time, what really mattersis whether the child is beating herself.So if that developmental thrust is notthere, the meaningfulness actuallydecreases.

The third aspect is very wishfulterritory. Can this data help meidentify my talent? Can it give mesome clues as to what I need to focuson because my greatness will come outof that? It is unlikely that my greatnesswill come out of neutralisingsomething I am bad at.

I am yet to see really meaningfulreports coming out of the assessmenttools we use. I’m sure some of you aredoing a spectacular job, but theintention of the assessment tools is notto just get it filled; perhaps there needsto be a little more on how it is followedthrough. That’s what I mean when Isay “the data needs to be actionable byme.”

Now the fourth box. Let us nowponder on inspiring resources. Can wereach a point where we say, “I will onlyspend on resources if they inspire mychildren.” The time for buying fatbooks so that children can identify thecapitals of the states was over 20 yearsago. However, the mind-set ofevaluating a book by the cost of paperremains! If there is a book available forjust Rs. 80 and it has a lot of pages, it

i-Actiondata

1. Continuous2. Comprehensive

- Skills- HO Competencies- Character

1. usable- vs Standard- Progress- Identify Talent

inspiringResources

1. “implements”(notthe Substance)

2. That's Help go"Beyond”

1. “Real” (real world,real places, realpeople)

2. “Fits”the learningprocess



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is considered a steal!

However, today, you can access 3million recipes of Rasam under 10seconds. If you had spoken to me 10years ago, I would have said that thereshould be no books. However, withexperience, I have realised that a moremoderate path is helpful. We realisedover time that there are a lot of firstgeneration learners, whose parentswant books in the house because thereare no books to refer to. So that hassome value. Taking extreme positionsis sometimes not really useful.

Going forward and for a lot of theschools, I think the resource questionneeds deep examination and I havesome suggestions. Can textbooks belooked upon as implements, like a forkand knife, and not as being the fooditself?

The biggest argument I have with thetextbook culture is that the bookbecomes the food. That’s not the food!Just because they have some pictures oftombs and Mughal history, doesn’tmake it knowledge. Knowledge is whatyou create by your interaction withmatter, by your experiences linkingwith what’s happening. The resource isan implement. So the de-Bibilisation,the de-Koranisation, the de-Gitaiaisation, of these documentsneeds to happen.

A good resource is something thatgoes beyond, something that is not inthe classroom and can take youelsewhere. Sometimes there are a lot ofresources in the community. Theycould be teachers’ husbands or wives,who are in interesting professions.They are also a resource that can bebrought into a classroom. Or therecould be monuments around. Thenwhen there is scale and so on,technology should be used, though notjust for the sake of technology.

One of the biggest issues with thiswhole history of textbooks is thatchildren grow up thinking that whathappens in the classroom is one world,and then there is the real world. Veryoften, we see this duality in parental

behaviour as well; they preachsomething, but they practisesomething else. For example, theparents say the lying and fighting areunacceptable, but go ahead and do itthemselves. This division betweenwhat-is-being-told-to-me and what-actually-exists can be broken if thelearning resources become more andmore real – real people and realexperiences.

When a resource is being used, can itfit the basic process? Can it not besome lipstick you put on top? Anyprocess you are following is like aprayer ceremony. If you are at areligious ceremony, you are not goingto take just any object and stick it intothe ceremony randomly. The ceremonyhas to follow the rules of that prayer.So, whether it is digital ormanipulatives or anything else that youare using, you should know that youare the master of where it will sit in theprocess. Otherwise, it becomes adecoration, and we know the shelf lifeof decorations after the festival orceremony is over.

None of this – the best process in theworld, the maximum clarity on skills,the most actionable data and the mostinspiring resources – is going to workunless the cross running in betweenthe four boxes (see fig) is operating.The cross is you; that’s us.

Learnful process, destinic skills, usefuldata and inspiring resources need to bebrought together by really solid

leadership. Once these blocks are inplace, then you can focus on your realwork, which is to bring leadership tothis job. Leadership is the act of doingthings which are difficult for the firsttime and marshalling people to do so.If we get caught up in the micro ofthese other things, then there is lossunless of course you are a Bollywoodmovie where everything's perfect!

However, what is this leadership on itsown? I have a suggestion. Just like wesharpen the other four boxes, let ussharpen the cross too. When we talk ofleadership in XSEED, we talk ofinstructional leadership, not the emptyI-am-the-boss kind of leadership. Weare in the business of learning andteaching, and I bring something to theparty on learning and teaching. That’swhy I am your leader.

It is not only because I may havetaught for a long time, and not onlybecause I am older than you or moresenior than you. It is because I also gothe classroom occasionally, andstruggle with the same things you do,and I value doing new and difficultthings in the process of instruction.Doing new and difficult things withother people is called leadership.Hence, the use of the phrase,instructional leadership.

However, even the best general in theworld cannot fight the army withouttools. The four elements are the toolswith which you fight the battle, butyour role is leadership, which includesprofessional development, teachertraining, leader training and principaltraining. How to push the envelope inall these areas? That is the role, that isthe destiny.

So when I say no walls, that’s what Imean. No walls, just elements. Whenthe elements come together, you are inthe middle as that inspirational leaderwho’s constantly evolving it, making ithappen every day. nAdapted from a talk by Ashish Rajpal at the XSEEDSchool of Tomorrow Conference 2011

Resources process

Skills data

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At XSEED, we have been wondering how tomake these four elements available toeveryone everywhere, as far as possible, and

keep the integrity of it as much as possible, sothat it becomes an inspiration for anyone,anywhere, even under a tree, or inside a 100 acrecampus.

For a long time, we had been resisting doinganything in technology, because we did not wantto do technology for the sake of technology. Wewanted to come up with something which wouldgenuinely push the envelope and be actuallyuseful. In doing so, we wanted to be veryconscious of the user interface because ourultimate user is the teacher.

Teachers are the midwives through whom theknowledge of children is born. If they are not ableto use what we create or they don’t believe in it,the utility will be quite limited. So the whole visionof XSEED Digital is to bring the four elements toyou at your fingertips, in your school.

Let me explain what I mean by that a little morespecifically. What we are talking about is a screenwith four windows. This could be any screen thatyou can access – the internet, your schoolcomputer, or your laptop. XSEED schools willrecognise three of the four windows on the screen.

The top right window will have the lesson plan.The teacher can access not just one plan but eachand every lesson plan that she is to teach duringthe course of the year. When she opens thatlesson plan, the worksheet for that particularlesson plan will open in the bottom left cornerautomatically.

Simultaneously, the assessment for that unit willopen up on the bottom right corner. The big drawhowever is the visual aid. The visual aid is notnatural geographic clips of volcanoes or anythingpertaining to the content of the lesson plan.Instead, the visual aid is live classrooms oflessons being taught, shot and edited into 12-minute modules. This is so that any teacher,anywhere in the world, can see that this is howone could teach this particular lesson and canactually share that with the children in theclassroom.

When this visual aid was shown to children, theysaid that when they saw those other children, theycould relate to them. These four windows are nodifferent from the four elements: the learningprocess is the lesson plan, the skills are theworksheet, the actionable data is theLearnometer, and the inspiring resource is the

video. It is nothing less, it is nothing more, it ismerely an inspiration.

We see XSEED Digital as a complete tool and nota decoration. We see this embedded in a learningprocess which is rigorous, deeply thought through,and one that is being implemented by many,irrespective of whether they are XSEED schools ornot. That embedding and completeness is veryimportant. XDV stands for XSEED Digital Videos.They are built on a very powerful research insight.There is extensive research to demonstrate what

happens to learners when they see other learnerslive or on video. If they see someone else they canrelate to struggling and then overcoming, thenresearch demonstrates that the learner believeshe or she can do it too. So, suppose I startstammering while speaking to an audience, whichwould be embarrassing for a minute or two, butthen I start speaking normally again. If there areone or two in the audience that have astammering problem, the chances are that theywill gain confidence regarding speaking in apublic forum, having seen that I overcame theproblem in a public forum.

Our own pilot research is showing that whenchildren see other children in a learning context,they start considering themselves worthy of asimilar experience. So think of children in smallertowns watching children from bigger towns, andthink of children from bigger towns watchingchildren from smaller towns, overcoming stuffwhich they thought they could never do. Nowideally they should all be in the same classroom.However, that doesn’t seem feasible in thislifetime. The same modelling effect is evident onteachers. They think, “She can do it, I can do it,and I can secretly watch when no one is looking,again and again and again, till I can do it betterthan her. And I use it when I want to use it, notwhen someone else asks me to.”

Finally, think of it as a teacher’s briefcase. Theurban executive won respect 50 years ago whenthey started carrying briefcases. Today, if you carrya briefcase, you look a bit silly. However, teachers

need respect in our society. So this is the box yougo to and say, “This has everything. This has mylesson plan, my worksheets, the assessment, eachof which is specially designed.” The assessment isrun before the video show and after, so that thepre and post can be measured by the teacherherself.

Each video has four parts to it. It has thedemonstration of a teacher teaching, and othersof children learning. The clip showing the teacherteaching is valuable to teachers and children,while the clip showing the children learning isvery valuable to the children. It has an animationbut only in 30 seconds to 1 minute clips.Embedded in that, at the right time, is a clip toclarify the concept. Finally, there is a clip thatshows the connection between the content of thelesson plan and real life. So if the lesson is onshadows, the clip may show shadows of JantarMantar and other things. If the lesson is onfloatation, there is a clip of a child floating on theriver, wearing a jacket. As you see, XSEED Digitalis a rich and inspiring resource tool. Of course, itwill not be perfect, and will have its ownshortcomings. There will be better versions thatwe will make in the future. However, for today, Iintroduce to you the thinking process that hasbegun this new phenomena. n

XSEED Digital is Differentn Complete Tool embedded in a learning

process and not a ‘decoration’n XDVs build on the powerful research insight

on the power of ‘models’n Anytime. Anywhere. Anyone Visionn ‘Teacher's Briefcase’ and professional

development aid

An oVeRVieW oF xSeed digiTAl

ASHISH RAJPAL is the MD and founder ofiDiscoveri Education. He quit a corporatecareer to pursue his passion in education.Apart from leading iDiscoveri, he’s also thehead teacher and learner of the organisation.

A former student of Howard Gardner, his areasof interests include “doing-classrooms”, self-esteem of children, and non-authoritarianleadership. He has personally led the creationof the XSEED iDiscoveri flagship program, thecurriculum-cum-training and assessmentprogram that has now reached over 700schools across the country.

Ashish has a Masters in Education fromHarvard University and an MBA from XLRI,Jamshedpur. He also teaches Grade IVScience and English. In 2008, he wasidentified by Education World Magazineamong the top 50 leaders changing educationin India and was chosen, as part of a selectgroup of global social entrepreneurs, to speakat the MIT Legatum Convergence.


Surprise Boxes And Un-building Walls - Ashish Rajpal

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