Frequently time (or the lack of it) gets in the way of documenting some of the journeys we take. Last term, Sebastian taught my year 11 IT class about vedic maths, using web conferencing via elluminate (Blackboard Collaborate).
Sebastian Rajattan from India is an educational innovator from Kerala, India. Verdic maths is the name given to the ancient system of Indian Mathematics and was commonly taught to the peasants.
- Initially coping with a different accent, for our students who are isolated culturally.
- Concentrating intently on the slides and presentation.
- Learning to work with a more visual type of maths
- Learning about another culture
What worked well:-
- Sebastian was well organised, competent in the use of elluminate, and had prepared some great slides to illustrate the concepts.
- Students correctly answered his questions, so they had learnt from him.
- He kept the presentation moving and engaged the students with interactive activities.
- Using web conferencing tools such as elluminate, allows the students to interact in the chat, respond to questions and concepts and to respond individually to questions asked.
- Great to have someone like Sebastian who is used to working with students, keeps the session moving, knows his topic and how to interact with students.
The constraints
- The powerpoint presentation failed to load from our end
- All slides had to be quickly saved as image files and uploaded individually. This pushed some out of order, making it difficult for the presenter.
- One of my boys could not logon with his netbook or with many of the spare desktops, but finally found a computer that would. This is frustrating for the students.
The bonuses
- As Sebastian used his video camera, we could see the women in his household say goodbye as they were about to go out shopping. This gave the students a glimpse of the beautiful Indian dress.
- As our school was being under research on our use of technology, a research student sat in on the lesson with us, and experienced the magic that technology can bring.
Thanks Sebastian, it is great to know you, thank you for teaching us and it is hoped that we can continue to make connections.
Footnote: I met Sebastian through a skype group. How do you meet your contacts?
Twitter/murcha
Del.icio.us/murcho
Skype/anne.mirtschin
GMail/Anne M
Blog/Anne M
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On an e-Journey with Generation Y 
Anne, thank you very much. Today, I begin training a team of four proactive Indian students in Vedic Mathematics and GeoGebra. They will be connecting with Anne Mirtschin’s students and member students at hlwskypers: http://bit.ly/q4eiYL
These young go-getters will connect with international peers and collaborate using GeoGebra and Vedic Mathematics.
We are all lucky to be alive at this exciting era of global brotherhood.
Hey its Vedic Maths and not Verdic Maths!
@sebastian I agree with you, it is such an exciting era of global connections and amazing that people at the ‘grass roots’ can connect and communicate as we do. We look forward to further connections.
@serrico Thank you for your link to that site on vedic maths and for the correction in the spelling of vedic maths. Oh dear, you can tell that I am not a maths teacher.I teach accounting and IT. I hope I have corrected everywhere that I had mispelt it.
Ladies wing of Kerala Chamber of Commerce and Industry is ready to spearhead eLearning & eTeaching in Kerala. We plan to have a skype session with Mike McGrother’s (http://mikemcgrother.com) team. He is to present educational use of Skype in Brussels to the decision makers of European Union. Ladies wing of KCCI has offered their active support. I am so happy of future prospects. Thank you for leading.
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Excellent profile and would be an asset for students
Vedic maths is based on sixteen sutra’s or principles . These principles are general in nature and can be applied in many ways . In practice, the vedic system is used to solve difficult problems or huge sums in more effective and easy way.These method are just a part of a complete system of mathematics which is far more systematic than the modern system taught now. The simplicity of vedic mathematics helps us to solve the calculations mentally with sifficient practice.
Vedic maths is highly helpful in cracking competitive exams .There are many vedic math online course one of them is http://www.wiziq.com/course/1507-vedic-mathematics-complete-certified-course So if anybody is intrusted to learn vedic math online can visit the link.