What do you get when you put together a historically and culturally rich city with a long tradition of learning and intellectual engagement, a group of parents with a broader view of education, their children who are curious and eager to learn, and teachers (and some pupils who earlier) enjoyed geography workshops offered at TIIGS?
Answer: GeoVidyaa Geography Centre – Mysuru
On Saturday, 10 January 2015, the management of Arivu School, Mysuru organized the inauguration of GeoVidyaa Geography Centre – Mysuru. (GVGC-M) at their charming and growing campus. It is a very interesting endeavor that a group of parents started with a view to providing their children an alternative to the existing educational patterns, while still using the standard syllabi (Karnataka and NCERT). They exercise a lot of freedom in giving children the best possible mix of learning methods. The children seem to really enjoy the place and the experience.
Some of Arivu’s students and teachers had attended previous geography workshops at TIIGS in Bengaluru. They had liked the experience and the learning at these. Subsequent discussions at Arivu led to one of the parents, Sri Sadanda, to contact TIIGS and start discussions for starting a GVGC at Arivu.
The day began with a brief inaugural function in which Sri Janardhan (one of the Trustees) welcomed the gathering. Dr Gananath (who is widely known for his methods of making mathematical learning interesting) spoke about the importance of resource centres and how he hoped the GVGC-M would grow. Sri Dhritiraj Sengupta (Student Associate, The Indian Institute of Geographical Studies; and 1st year MSc student in Geography at University of Mysore) created a ‘pin’ on GoogleMap showing the location of GVGC-M.
Dr Chandra Shekhar Balachandran (Founder + Director, TIIGS) distributed various vegetables, fruits, and spices among the participants and, using these, briefly spoke about the geography that connects them. He emphasized the need for us to make connections among things and that the connections always included geography.
Following the inauguration, there were two workshops that Dr Balachandran conducted in Kannada (the official language of Karnataka State):
- Mapping – mainly for the children of the school, and
- Latitudes & Longitudes – mainly for teachers.
Teachers came from Arivu School and schools from such places as Kodagu, Chamarajanagar, etc.
GVGC-M will grow into a hub for teachers from several surrounding districts to develop their capacities in geography education and bring about incremental changes in their own schools. GVGC-M joins the other four GVGCs (Bengaluru, Chamarajanagar, Chennai, and Coimbatore) in a growing network of institutions and individuals interested in making geography education for the 21st century available to more and more people, especially children.
TIIGS will soon be approaching various sources for supporting the development of a “GeoCapabilities” approach to our work. If you want to join us in our efforts and help bring 21st century transformational geography education for children in India, contact us by using the comment box below this blog post, or fill out the form at the end of this blog.
Below are scenes from the day
Feedback from pupils who participated in the workshops
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