Our Correspondent
Kohima, Sep. 5 (EMN): Chief Minister of Nagaland, Neiphiu Rio, on Monday launched three initiatives -- Nagaland Reading Festival, Digital Teacher's Diary, and ASSET-Question-a-Day (AQAD) on the occasion of Teachers' Day at Capital Cultural Hall in Kohima.
Principal Director of School Education, Thavaseelan K informed that Nagaland Reading Festival is a statewide celebration of school leaders' innovations on the theme "Love for Reading".
It is an occasion for principals and headmasters of schools to design and implement activities that can solve their students ' reading challenges. The goal of the festival is to help students from classes 1 to 8 read effectively with comprehension.
The festival will be hosted through DIKSHA, which is the national infrastructure for education, he said.
The Department of School Education (DoSE), Samagra Shiksha Mission and SCERT will jointly anchor this initiative, he said while extending invitations to government school leaders and school teams across Nagaland to participate in the festival and make it a grand success.
He added that they are working with Bengaluru-based foundation Mantra 4 Change on the initiative, which is fully sponsored through corporate social responsibility (CSR) funding.
Teachers need regular monitoring and supervision on performance of their assigned duties. Performing teachers need to be recognised and awarded while the underperforming ones should be supported to develop their capabilities. This will help them deliver lessons more effectively, thereby enhancing learning outcomes of students, said Thavaseelan.
Introduced by DoSE in all government schools across the state in 2020, the Teacher's Diary is a comprehensive tool that assists and motivates teachers to plan their teaching learning activities efficiently and at the same time serves as their performance assessment record.
He added that the 'teacher-friendly' Teacher's Diary serves as a mirror of their performance. The physical teacher's diary has now been upgraded into a digital format as the ‘digital teacher's diary’ and is being integrated into the teacher's app. ‘This would enable the sub-divisional, district and state-level officials to monitor the classroom transactions being carried out in government schools across the state on a real time basis. Officials of the recently established Nagaland Education Management and Information System (NEMIS) Control Room at the Directorate of School Education will regularly monitor the implementation and usage of the digital teacher's diary’.
The ASSET-Question-a-Day (AQAD) is a free exercise by DoSE in collaboration with Educational Initiatives (El) for students across the state in both government and private schools.
It is a set of competency-based questions to test the high-order-thinking skills of students and to evaluate students on their understanding of key concepts. Each question has been carefully curated from a list of questions that show student’s misconceptions and can be accessed on the DOSE's website, informed Thavaseelan.
The AQAD is for classes 3 to 9 covering various subjects. It is available for English, Mathematics and Science for classes 3 and 4. For classes 5 to 9, it’s available for English, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies. On the AQAD platform, students of classes 3-9 are able to attempt MCQ - type questions that are engaging and stimulating. One question for each class will be presented daily on the department's webpage. English – Mathematics- Science - Mathematics - Science - Social Studies from Monday to Saturday in that order. Students can submit their answers, as well as use the option to explain their answers, said the principal director of School Education.
‘The intent of this initiative is to give students an opportunity to engage with high-quality questions that help can them appreciate a deeper understanding of the concepts taught in the classroom. It is hoped that AQAD will help students understand academic concepts deeply and comprehensively, in addition to providing them with an opportunity to demonstrate their skills at a pan - India level. The DoSE is motivated to engage with students directly in various forms, and the AQAD platform will allow students to connect with high - quality questions from the comfort of their homes in a simple and effective manner,’ he added.