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| The CF and Director of Bandipur Tiger Reserve presenting a serious talk |
‘The World is losing 2.5 hectare of
Forests every minute’ echoed the papers of Mysore on Saturday, reporting the
inaugural address of the Teacher’s Training Workshop organised by Hasiru Hejje.
It was rather disappointing to read the same title in many newspapers.
The previous day, twenty five teachers of
various schools around Mysore had gathered in the auditorium of the RMNH for
the three days program designed to be a capacity building exercise for the in-service
Science teachers. It was meticulously planned to introduce new concepts as well
as methodologies for the teachers to carry back. With a lot of newer concepts emerging in the
field of Conservation biology and they being applied at the grass roots, we had
decided to bring in H C Kantharaju, conservator of Forests and the Director of
the Bandipur National Park, who is known for his good administration and
Oratory skills. Beyond his Inaugural
address, he was also part of the Workshop and delivering a theme talk on the
very first session. His in depth knowledge, and every day experience with the
management of the Tiger forests captured the minds of every teacher. The simple
and straight forward slide presentation had a few gory pictures of victims
mauled by Wild animals; they were, as the pictures of electrocuted elephants and
run-over tigers very disturbing. The
conservator held the imagination of the participants with his bombarding
details of history, Natural History, Science and politics involved in his
everyday life.
He spoke of his success as well as shortfalls.
There were a lot of minute details of
the Tiger issue and the numerous policy stands that the Govt. had regarding it.
He did stress the need of the Science in modern day conservation, like he did
upon the role of teachers in motivating youngsters to good citizenry. He
mentioned the role of NGOs and the volunteers in Tiger conservation. But I don’t know why our papers uniformly
caught a very old and now stale statement of the United Nations quoted by the
speaker for their headlines.
The
participants went through the museum gallery and had a feel of how best it
could be used to inspire their children with science and facts about Nature. It
was followed by an outdoor discussion about the sixth intelligence and Nature
smart kids. The day was called off after a documentary upon the life of Sir.
David Attenborough.
ANTing in the campus
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| Participants collecting ants |
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| In search of ants |
This
year we chose Ants as the subject of in-house study. The participants were
briefed and sent out with voile into the museum garden to pick up a few ants
for study. Even teachers found it amusingly difficult to catch these tiny
creatures. Some got on all fours and crawled on the lawn and few tried to reach
up the higher branches of franjipani trees. All the quarries were mounted on a
digital microscope and projected on the screen for explanations. Sixteen species
of ants were collected in all. S J Srinivasa, Artist and modeler at the Museum
made a slide presentation on the identification and behaviour of the ants.
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| Ants in voile |
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| Fixing the ants |
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| An insect through digital microscope |
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| An insect examination |
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| Participants looking at an anotomical exhibit |
The
post lunch session was a slide talk by Master trainer, Dr. Prasanna Kumar of
the Azem Premji Foundation. He chose to talk on ‘Living with Science-Explore and Experience’ and started with a
small video clip made upon the narrative of the Gia, the mother of Earth. With breath taking visuals and mystic
narration the film conveyed that Mother Nature doesn’t need us but we need
Mother Nature. He said what he found through years of experience - to develop
love and concern for the earth, one needs deep, absorbing nature experiences;
otherwise the relation remains distant and abstract without touching one
deeply. His lessons on Constructivism
and Behaviourism made the concept of education more baffling to understand. He used the examples of three Ganesha idols-
one made of wet clay, the other made of hard Rock and another moulded in
Plastic; the benefits and setbacks of each of the idols were explained, clarity
prevailed over the topic.
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| Dr. Prasanna Kumar on Constructivism |
He
showed the success story of Mission Mars and compared the joy the huge big team
of scientists had on its completion of the mission of sending in the pictures
of the red plant and the joys of success of a class room project. He insisted
the teachers to give a small hand lens to a child and that will one day become
a microscope or a telescope.
The
day culminated with some activity based on word building that was shown in
three different variations.
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| The workshop kick-started |
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