Rafikh Rashid Shaikh

Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Networked computers can potentially support classrooms to be more interactive. It can help students share representations amongst themselves and work together on a shared virtual activity space. In research on the role of shared screens or shared virtual workspace in learning settings, there has been less attention paid to contexts where learners a...

Most government schools and colleges run on low budgets in India, yet they cater to a large population of students. In government settings, biology labs lack basic equipment such as simple microscopes or compound microscopes or sometimes possess just one instrument. In the absence of compound or simple microscopes, the students lose interest in sci...

A module on basic astronomy has been prepared for Grade 8 or Grade 9 students as a part of a large-scale field action project called ‘Connected Learning Initiative’ (CLIx). It is a sequence of 12 classroom lessons in blended mode. The module was rolled out in nine schools in Jaipur district of Rajasthan, India. For this study, we observed one schoo...

Sociocultural theory puts social interaction at the center of all learning processes. However, classrooms worldwide and specifically in India see minimal social interaction. Various approaches that can make classrooms interactive have been suggested and tested. Networked computers is one such approach in which use of personal devices like tablets,...

Proposal: Education systems in the world and particularly in the global south are evolving. Preparing good quality teachers is one of the main challenges in front of many of these countries. Several countries, even in the global south, have some component of in-service teacher education. Studies on online or blended courses report that teachers res...

The article is about a frugal microscope called Foldscope and its use by students and teachers in India

Many teaching-learning applications have a computer-mediated sharing feature and it is important that we study its role in the teaching-learning process in detail. The present study, which is a part of the larger study, probes the impact of the computer-mediated sharing feature on classroom activities. 45 students who belonged to a 4th-grade classr...

As a part of the connected learning initiative a blended module called 'Basic Astronomy' is designed for Grade 8 and 9 students. This paper focuses on the play material included in this module namely a digital game and role-plays. Since scalability was one of the main objectives of the project and consequently, the module was meant to be implemente...

Students and adults struggle to understand the explanations of simple astronomical phenomena. Research has shown that much of the difficulty lies with students' difficulty to use visuospatial reasoning. Drawing on research on embodied cognition, multimodality and multimedia learning, a short pedagogic sequence called 'Basic Astronomy module' was de...

Science is deprived of the vast intellect of masses due to the non-inclusive and inaccessible nature of the current system. However, citizen science projects are disrupting the system and proving to be highly inclusive in terms of diversity in indigenous knowledge and culture, ecosystems across all geographical terrains and human civilization influ...

Conservation of the environment is the need of the hour. Conservation efforts have short term and long term objectives. One of the important long term objectives is to create informed children who understand the merits of biodiversity. Understanding biodiversity is critical for meaningful and long-lasting ecological conservation. Observation and id...

Our investigation focusses on a group of eleven lower-middle-class students from classrooms in which the teachers did most of the talking and students rarely asked any questions. We have examined whether spontaneous discussions among the students in a less structured setting would include questioning, and what kinds of questions they might ask. Our...

In this poster we will present the Teacher Professional Development efforts undertaken by CLIx for high-school science teachers and some reflections about its impact based on the preliminary data. The data comes primarily from five sources: Workshop evaluation forms filled by teachers, Backend data from the online course (pre-test, MCQs, assignment...

The zone of proximal development (ZPD) could be a fruitful framework for understanding processes that enable learning in a collaborative environment. How can one create a platform with connected computers which would allow the learners to create a ZPD by design? We discuss design requirements for such a platform and we present two examples to subst...

With the advent of networked computers sharing of information and artifacts have become very convenient. From online multi-player games to social networking sites, instant sharing has become the norm of the day. Educational tools are trying to harness sharing as a potential tool to engage students in learning processes. But, does sharing lead to an...

http://www.teacherplus.org/2017/may-june-2017/a-slate-for-every-child-rethinking-education-in-the-age-of-computers

Tthis paper was written as a part of Course on Cognition and Cognitive Development.

Teaching children base-ten place-value system in multidigit number using currency

Studies show that people can recognize their own movements, such as their own walking (presented in silhouette using point lights), their own drawing (presented as a moving point light), own clapping, and their own piano playing. We extend this result to proprioceptive control, showing that people can recognize their own eye movements, when present...

How does the mammalian retina detect motion? This classic problem in visual neuroscience has remained unsolved for 50 years. In search of clues, here we reconstruct Off-type starburst amacrine cells (SACs) and bipolar cells (BCs) in serial electron microscopic images with help from EyeWire, an online community of 'citizen neuroscientists'. On the b...

In a regular Indian classroom, we expect children to become literate, but do not allow them to speak enough or communicate with each other. In a technology aided classroom, however, the barriers to different types of communication breaks down. Chat application is one such example, which allows the children to communicate. In particular, chat create...