Delhi school event: AFGJI, Subroto Park, conducts inter-school mono act competition

Air Force Golden Jubilee Institute (AFGJI), Subroto Park, hosted the 10th IQF Inter-school Mono Act contest on virtual platform Microsoft Teams under the guidance of its principal Poonam S Rampal. It was co-hosted by Indus Quality Foundation (IQF), a not-for-profit organisation which believes in the philosophy of Swami Vivekananda and is doing pioneering work in improving the quality of people’s lives in our country.

The event, which was open to students of Classes 8 to 12, saw the participation of 27 schools of Delhi-NCR and other cities of India . The chief guest was Sanjay Kaul, founder of Sofyx Systems India Pvt Ltd and former country head of Apple India. He complimented the school and the participants and spoke about the importance of having a role model in life and also the importance of integrity, hard work, commitment. The special guest was Pravrajika Jnanaprana Mataji, a monastic member of Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission. Mataji is also the principal of Nivedita Vidya Mandir, New Delhi. She lauded the efforts of IQF, the host and participating schools and also all the participants. She also requested the students to follow the virtues of purity, patience and perseverance and have faith in themselves. The participants were given five themes based on Swami Vivekananda’s thoughts and sayings. They were given two minutes to present their act in English and were adjudged by an esteemed panel of judges.

The criteria for judgement was creative content, acting, expression, voice modulation, adherence to time and costume. The participants wore Indian dresses and performed excellently.

The three exceptional performers were Arth Trivedy of Class 10 from Ahlcon International School, Mayur Vihar, Taru Satija of Class 10 from The Air Force School, New Delhi and Mishelle Mahesh Kapoor of Class 10 from Sadhu Vaswani International School for Girls, New Delhi. Prizes were given to them and certificates were awarded to all the participants. This event was assisted by IQF director Debajit Das, IQF consultant Rajat Mishra and all the IQF members. This event would not have been successful but for the co-operation of the school management and the participating schools.

‘There are different benefits of online & classroom education’

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in schools being shut all across the world. Globally, over 1.2 billion children are out of the classroom. As a result, education has changed dramatically, with the rise of e-learning, whereby teaching is undertaken remotely and on digital platforms. In India over 321 million students have been affected by this. Online classes are a good option for a short term but they also create a digital divide.

The difference between traditional and online education is especially noticeable in three dimensions: access to learning, classroom space, and possibility of implementing innovative teaching practices. On the other hand, advantage of traditional courses offers students direct contact with the teachers. Face-to-face communication allows students to ask questions concerning their doubts and immediately getting the answers they seek. It helps to develop friendship, leadership qualities and fosters teamwork. Learning in front of a PC can’t be compared with the results of offline classes. The second significant difference between online and on-site education is classroom space. The concept of online has been revolutionary in the world of education. It is possible to see that there are different benefits of both the physical classroom and online education offered to students in this hard time.

Wings of Fire: Motivational story for budding scientists

The book I recently read is Wings Of Fire, an autography of former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam who is popularly known as the Missile Man of India. According to Dr Kalam, everyone has wings and we should work hard to give fire to these wings. It’s a very inspirational book.

Any child who wants to become a scientist should read this book to gain more knowledge about that field and develop an intelligent scientific brain like Dr Kalam. The former President partnered with Arun Tiwari to pen this book.

In this book, he narrates an interesting incident that happened with him. “Once in his class, a child made a paper plane and threw it out of the window. The mathematics teacher saw that and thought that it was done by Kalam. He scolded him very much. Two months later, when Kalam scored full marks in the mathematics paper, his mathematics teacher praised him in the school assembly and said that the child who is scolded by him the most goes very high.”

I liked that incident very much because from that point Kalam’s journey of success started. The book also tells us about the difficulties he faced to succeed in his life and to become the President of India. After becoming the President, he said “Work harder in your life so that the world remembers you even after your death”. This quote gives a message of doing something great in your life to touch the sky with your heights of work. Although, I don’t have such a scientific mind...But when I started reading this book, a thought of becoming the greatest scientist in this world came to my mind. I recommend this book not only to future scientists but also to the children who want to achieve their goals in their lives and who want to touch the sky with their achievement and the ground with their heart.