We got fresh!

Well, actually, we just got refreshed! 🙂  Today is Vijayadashami – an important day in India. On this day, people celebrate the triumph of good over evil. It is also considered an auspicious day for beginning noble tasks.

These include geography education!

So, we launch our new website today.

Welcome to the new website of The Indian Institute of Geographical Studies.

And to the new logo.

First off, thanks to Vivek Dhar for leading this effort and bringing a new look and feel to the rapidly growing efforts of TIIGS. He has worked very hard, indeed.

So, what’s new at TIIGS and on the website?

First, the logo. Here is Vivek’s take on the new logo:

The new logo is a partial circle that forms a G (for Geography and Geovidyaa) and has a tilt that matches Earth’s axial tilt.

This logo is flexible — it has no dependency on color, making it easy to reproduce and it still works with any color scheme the website may take on.

It has a short and long form; having to use the long form everywhere is restrictive.

It overcomes the difficulties of the restrictive mixed uppercase lettering and ultra-thin lines of the previous logo, and works well with both web and print

It is also somewhat simple and fun, not ‘institutional.’

Our efforts to bring geography education to underprivileged students and institutions are rapidly growing. We believe that geography education offers very practical insights, tools, and skills for our youth to be able to make a difference to the world through a career as geographers.

Collaborations:

TIIGS has begun collaborating with a variety of institutions on many geography education related work. Here is a brief look at them:

1. Army Public School, Bangalore. TIIGS has partnered with APS to start the first GeoVidyaa Geography Centre of Excellence (“GeoVidyaa Centre” for short). The support of the Principal, Ms. Manjula Raman has been superb and the Centre is growing to be an important location. Soon, there will be more resources available to teachers and students there.
2. Jagruthi MEG School, Bangalore school caters mainly to children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The students are eager to learn. TIIGS is providing additional geography education support in the form of workshops for kids.
3. Young Creators’ Den, Bangalore is a Montessori-style learning space for students, young and old. YCD is partnering with TIIGS to present various geography education activities. The first effort is “Explore a World of Ideas!”, a series of documentary screenings on the second Sunday of every month with discussion of the topics, questions and answers.
4. Dhwani Trust, Bangalore and TIIGS collaboratively offered a 3-day workshop in Kannada on geography education for 10 resource persons from the District Institute of Educational Training (DIET), Bijapur. We look forward to working together more in the future.
5. District Institute of Educational Training (DIET), Bijapur have embarked upon a very innovative idea: a geography resource centre for Bijapur district. This is the first of its kind in Karnataka. TIIGS is proud and happy to be part of the development process.
6. Centre for Leadership and Management in Public Services (C-LAMPS), Bangalore has been a key facilitator in bringing about TIIGS’ collaboration with DIET (Bijapur) and Dhwani. TIIGS looks forward to develop this relationship also into the future.
7. RV Education Consortium (RVEC), Bangalore is a consortium of government and civil society organizations that helps improve educational delivery. TIIGS has begun working with RVEC in making contributions to improvements in geography education.
8. TIIGS is in the process of developing a partnership with a university in the USA. (Details will be announced at an appropriate time.)
9. TIIGS is collaborating with the Association of American Geographers’ Global Geography Education Center as a local organizer for a USA-South Asia geography educators’ workshop in March 2012. This workshop will develop content for an online international geography course.

Online resources page:

With the launch of this new site, we include a geo-materials page which will provide links to many online resources for geography education. Both students and teachers will be able to use these.

Future directions in English:

1. Certificate courses for geography teachers in all syllabi. We hope to begin these in June/July 2012.
2. Certificate courses for students. We hope to begin these also in June/July 2012.
3. “Explore a World of Ideas” – FREE regular documentary screenings for students and anyone else interested in geography. Please stay tuned (join our Google groups) for further details.
4. Interesting, extra-curricular geography activities. For example, “delicious geography” (connections between food and geography), “bharatanatyam and geography”, “Jinnah’s folly” (geography and history), “reading landscapes” (walk-about geography), etc.

Knowledge and outreach in Kannada:

1. Online resources page: With the launch of this new site, we include a geo-materials page in Kannada also.
2. Kannada content: As of 1 August 2011, TIIGS website started a Kannada blog. This needs to grow. There has been a lot of interest among teachers in internet resources for geography education. The DIET, Bijapur effort mentioned earlier will have a strong IT-Enabled Geography (ITEG) component and TIIGS will be a keen player in this effort. On our website, you will notice two important links in Kannada: one is to the Kannada blog and the other to the Kannada version of the geo-materials page.
3. Kannada workshops: Increasingly, TIIGS is involved in Kannada language workshops for geography education. This is a heartening development as there is a dire need in this sector.

Future directions in Kannada:

1. Many teachers and well-wishers (including partners) have been urging TIIGS to start offering certificate courses for teachers of geography in government schools in Karnataka. TIIGS aims to begin offering these courses beginning June/July 2012.
2. Regular workshops and other teacher-capacity building activities will be organized at the GeoVidyaa Centre soon.
3. Increased, regular activities with K-12 students to empower them to produce geographic knowledge rather than just be passive consumers. Doing all this through fun and play is an important approach.
4. Interesting, extra-curricular geography activities (as mentioned above).

We are always seeking partners to develop the necessary infrastructure and support personnel and other necessities of our work.

At present, we are seeking partners to develop an IT-Enabled Geography resource centre. This will reach out to all sections of society, particularly to disadvantaged youth.

Online contribution facility for U.S. donors:

Soon, supporters in the U.S.A. will be able to make tax-deductible financial contributions using PayPal^TM online. This link will be on the “support” page in the near future.

Meanwhile, if you would like to make a contribution via check, please contact us for details.

We need many kinds of partners. If you think you would like to partner with us, please contact us.

But first, check out selected images of scenes from our various activities over the years here (link will open in a new tab/window).

When you are done, do spend some time and tour our site to see what we are up to in 21^st century geography education!