XSEED conference grand success

The XSEED School of Tomorrow conference organised by the Gurgaon-based iDiscoveri Education Pvt. Ltd convened in Bangalore on August 3, attracted more than 500 school-owners, principals and key administrators. Moreover live webcast of proceedings to 1,000 schools reached one million students, parents and educators, according to a company spokesperson.The theme of the conference was ‘Solving the Dilemma. Private school education is a spreading social phenomenon with 40-60 percent of all students in private schools — a thriving industry valued at over $20 billion (Rs.132,000 crore). Yet, given poor learning outcomes and paucity of teaching talent, school leaders feel the desperate need to upgrade the quality of teaching, learning and curriculum. But in reality their energy is sucked into the management of everything else — parents who increasingly demand involvement in school affairs, increasing competition from well-funded corporate players, and interventionist government regulations like the Right to Education Act, 2009, says Ashish Rajpal founder-chief executive of iDiscoveri, explaining the theme of the one-day conference. The conference featured highly respected educationists as speakers including Pasi Sahlberg, acclaimed author of the book Finnish Lessons, which documents Finlands successful education reforms; Deepa Sridhar, leader of Sri Kumaran Children Home, Bangalore; Luis Miranda, trustee of the Society for Nutrition Education and Health Action; Mansoor Khan, promoter-director of several DPS schools in Bangalore; Vasanthi Hariprakash, an independent media professional; the Chennai-based Dr. S. Anandalakshmy, eminent child development specialist, and Dr. M.S. Vijay Kumar, director of digital learning and educational innovation and technology at MIT, Boston. TWS recruits new expat teachers To augment its credentials as a globally benchmarked international school, the K-12 Taurian World School, Ranchi (TWS) has recently appointed several highly qualified expatriates to raise teaching-learning standards and improve critical thinking skills of the schools 520 students. Among them: Chloe Hill, an education postgraduate of Bath University, UK with over a decades teaching experience in international schools in India, Japan and the UK who has been appointed senior manager, curriculum development; Date Modeste from the Ivory Coast and Maher El Echi from Tunisia to teach French, and Irina Fedorova from Russia to develop an institutional learning support department. In TWS we are conscious of the importance of reflection and self-evaluation for continuous improvement in classroom practice and institutional level development. We are confident that these highly qualified professional teachers will enable and empower our new endeavours in the field of international education, says Dharam Raj Singh, principal of TWS. Sheffield Hallam invites applications Sheffield Hallam University (estb. 1843) one of the UKs largest universities globally reputed for innovation and excellence, invites admission applications for postgrad professional programmes in information technology, database and enterprise systems management for the academic year beginning November. Comments Sudha Toppo, the Delhi-based regional co-ordinator (South Asia) of the varsity: At Sheffield Hallam, we are fully committed to academic excellence. Therefore the courses for the November intake are specially planned to enable students to explore different aspects of working as professionals in the IT industry. Students projects are designed to produce something…