Every sphere of our ‘modern human lives’ is at the disposal of technology. Whether it is booking a cab to work or communicating with a distant relative, one cannot prevent the invasion of technology. However, when it comes to the education industry, not much changed radically over the past century and before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Be it our curriculum for education or the usage of blackboards to elucidate concepts, our education couldn’t make way for the integration of technology.
OpenLink’s Foundation, a non-profit organization believed it is time for change. With a mission to make education fun and relevant, this noteworthy organization is challenging the traditional learning systems. This mission requires teachers to be empowered with tools that support all round development of the students. tickLinks, from OpenLinks Foundation, with amazing content is available at no cost to educators. It allows teachers to quickly prepare for a class wherein teachers can execute a class in various ways – activity-based learning, case study-based learning, experiential learning, worksheets to practice, videos and images to enhance sensory perception etc.
Students spend a large part of their day at school learning. Therefore, tickLinks strengthens the teaching learning process in the classroom at a large scale so as to allow students to learn with fun. Apart from visualization and understanding, the content made available transforms teaching to discussion-oriented classrooms – which benefits the students in learning from each other’s perspective and develop articulation skills and confidence.
tickLinks is an open community platform for teachers that helps them find high quality resources aligned to their curriculum – lesson plans, activities, worksheets, videos etc. It reduces their class preparation time and improves their class effectiveness. tickLinks.com is like the Wikipedia for the teaching community which features over 9,500 high quality lesson plans for CBSE Classes 1 – 10th – covering – English, Math, EVS, Science and SST. These plans are available in both English and Hindi. Various state board curricula have been mapped to this initiative with a vision to bring many more on board.
To make learning fun, Community Engagement and Development Programs are offered for students and teachers. “Vivekananda Young Explorer” is a contest for students for Science, Maths and English – run in partnership with Ramakrishna Mission Science centre and DAV Chennai. The aim of the contest is to promote activity based learning and soft skill development.
“Share Your Best” is another contest for teachers of Science, Maths and English – run in partnership with IISER, Pune and DAV Chennai. The aim of this contest is to develop lesson planning skills for activity based learning and inter-disciplinary skills amongst teachers.
OpenLinks also runs educative webinars. The last webinar – “10 Stories of Teacher Leadership” featured Shri Anurag Tripathi, CBSE Secretary as the Chief Guest along with Mamta Saikia – CEO, Bharti Foundation. Workshops for teachers through story sessions (to understand and develop solutions for social-emotional issues) are a regular phenomenon at the OpenLinks Foundation.
Formed in 2016, this organization has been able to crack striking partnerships schools to amplify their work and reach out to over 500 schools in India. By 2025, they intend to impact 30,000 schools in India. Some key partnerships that they work with are the Bharti Foundation, Teach for India, SOS Children, DAV Chennai, Ramakrishna Mission. This initiative runs with volunteer support lent by teachers who work relentlessly to ensure high quality by verifying the content being added by the community in the tickLinks library. Anyone who is good at storytelling and presentation can actively participate to run sessions in for workshops and develop material for their magazine.
Though available for free – this open source tool offers very high quality resources and tools for online teaching and also for in-classroom teaching. The mission is targeting to uplift the quality of education at mass level and for low income schools. Yet, tickLinks will do proud to any school serving the upper end of the society – for online learning management systems and teacher lesson plans.
“There are many bright people in our country. By working together we can solve our problems and – make a much better place for ourselves.”, concludes Sanjay Dalmia, the CEO & Founder of OpenLinks.
