Chennai: Education pioneer, XSEED Education, announced that its count of digitally ready teachers has crossed 20,000. XSEED, a pioneer in pedagogy, teacher training and curriculum for elementary years, said that they had empowered these teachers by helping them cross the digital divide during the last two years. The teacher digital empowerment effort had a two-pronged approach – the launch of the ‘SuperTeacher App’ backed by the weekly ‘SuperTeacher Saturday Seminar Series’ for Teachers’. The XSEED SuperTeacher App ensured that the renowned experiential XSEED Method was transferred to an online form in a simple manner for effective teaching.
The Seminar series stepped in to assist teachers through the basics of online instructions and how to communicate and teach the same lessons effectively and seamlessly. Today, over 20,000 teachers are now fully prepared, comfortable and have attained expertise in imparting online teaching thanks to the SuperTeacher Saturday Seminar series that ran for 18 months on the trot.
The pandemic wreaked havoc on education due to the shutdown and forced transmission toward an online mode of learning without preparation. Other issues that came up were lack of IT support, technological fears, and most critically unoptimised software for mobile devices. These challenges coupled with a lack of teacher preparedness, with a high number of them receiving no orientation on delivering education digitally was of high concern.
At this juncture, XSEED took the decision to pivot its existing curriculum to connect students and teachers in a meaningful way. The first step was the launch of the SuperTeacher App. The App ensured that the uniqueness of the XSEED experimental method was transferred to an online form in a simple manner. Now, a teacher was equipped to impart lessons, track and monitor progress all from his/her mobile phone. XSEED trained teachers on the basics of online instructions and higher-order skills on how to get the best out of students while teaching online.
XSEED’s ‘SuperTeacher Saturday Seminar Series’ was another initiative rolled out at this time. This seminar series is an e-training module designed to prepare and support teachers and make them aware of the essential tools they need. The Seminar series provided thorough personal and professional training to teachers in an effective way, via XSEED’s user-friendly platform, the SuperTeacher App. XSEED’s content-packed and intuitive SuperTeacher App assists teachers with academic planning and teaching online and in classrooms. The App also helps teachers with assessment planning and test making.
Ashish Rajpal, Founder, XSEED Education, said, “Our vision for the SuperTeacher App was to ensure the magic of the interactive XSEED method was transferred online in a simple manner. Since the pandemic broke, XSEED has been running this online SuperTeacher Saturday Seminar Series for Teachers, every Saturday, for 18 months non-stop. I consider the training and equipping over 20,000 teachers for taking up the online teaching challenge to be one of the major achievements of XSEED. School managements and teachers have universally acknowledged the role of the SuperTeacher Saturday Seminars in making their schools pandemic ready. We were quick to adopt, mandate and implement learning through digital means.”
Nithya Guhan, AV Meyyappan Meiyappan Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Chennai said, “The biggest problem we faced during the pandemic was that there was not enough time to impart training to teachers on how to teach online. The XSEED SuperTeacher Saturday Seminar Series along with the SuperTeacher App was godsent at that time. The skills required to teach effectively on camera in an online environment are different from offline classes. The seminar series by XSEED helped our teachers to improve their online skills by leaps and bounds.”
Ms Cruz, Immaculate Conception, Bulacan, Philippines said, “The XSEED SuperTeacher Saturday Seminar Series is very useful and impressive as it offers effective, convenient, and flexible solutions for teachers to further their professional development. These seminars made the transition from offline to online classes seamless and helped teachers to develop critical and logical thinking in children. All the seminar series were quite useful and effective as they are application-based.”