Another visit to the CMU Department of CEE

It was nice to visit the CMU (Children's Media Unit) department of CEE. Went through the recent publications that they have done and having a glance on the prior once also. They have been involved in the publication done by CEE for many of the environmental activities all around India.



There I met Rajeswari mam, a scientist and a part of the publication design team at CMU. After discussing my project and what I intended to do, she added on a lot of information and insights to it. She also showed me a lot of books and other publications trying to help me out to understand the concept of pond ecology from the scientific approach as well as from the targeted audience point of view.

Trying to understand the targeted audience

For the target audience my major focus is on the upper primary and middle school level students. In India CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) classifies Middle School as Class 5 to Class 8 (typically ages 10–13). There are other Central Boards such as ICSE (Indian Certificate of Secondary Education). Each state has its own State Board. Each has its own standards, which might be different from the Central Boards.In some institutions, providing education for 5th to 10th are known as secondary school.


Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.
The "Hole in the Wall" project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who's now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it "minimally invasive education."

On my prior visit to CEE (Centre for Environment Education) I met Pankaj sir and Rajashree mam from the CMU (Children's Media Unit) there. During the conversation Mam showed me this Draft of teaching manual contaning materials meant for the understanding for the teachers on how to make the kids explore a pond in a better manner. I just read it briefly and the excercises and the games were really nicely designed strategy to get the kids of different age groups involved in the understanding of the pond ecology.

A visit to GEER Foundation

Gujarat Ecological Education and Research (GEER) Foundation is an autonomous body, set up in 1982 by the Forests & Environment Department, Government of Gujarat. The Foundation has been registered as a Society under the Indian Societies Registration Act, 1860, and as a Public Trust under the Bombay Public Trust Act of 1950.The Foundation is governed by a Board of Governors chaired by the Hon'ble Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Ecological education being one of the primary objectives of the Foundation, nature education programmers for specific target groups such as school children were initiated by the Foundation way back in 1982. Till date, the Foundation has organised 3,068 camps which have benefited more than 1.70 lakh school children and 10,000 teachers. Special camping sites at Indroda Nature Park (INP) and Hingolgadh Nature Education Sanctuary (HNES) have been developed for this purpose. The Foundation organises about 150 nature education camps every year covering about 7,500 students and 300 teachers. During each camp, participants stay in the wild for two nights and three days. Recently, GEER Foundation has developed a wilderness park in the eastern part of the Indroda Nature Park with good camping facilities viz. good dense forest, tents, cottages, amphitheatre, wildlife interpretation centre etc.

Discussion with my Project Guide Mr. Rupesh Vyas

Went to the IT Center (NID) to have a discussion with Rupesh Vyas, my guide for this project. After a discussion and after going through my research methodologies he suggested some rectifications in the Phrases and stages and gave some insights on how to diagnose it and analyze and synthesize on it. Then he suggested to always refer back to the strategies designed and said to follow design iterations considering design factors for the strategy designed.

We then also discussed upon the targeted audience and the cognitive ability of the targeted audience. While discussing he helped me in putting my intentions for the project into appropriate words. His insights were of great help to further analyze where the whole project was heading towards.

A visit to CEE ( Centre for Environment Education )

Centre for Environment Education (CEE) was created in recognition of the importance of environmental education in India’s overall environment and development strategy. The result of a unique partnership between government and a non-governmental institution, CEE was established as a Centre of Excellence in 1984.
CEE has inherited the rich multi-disciplinary resource base and varied experience of Nehru Foundation for Development, its parent organisation, which has been promoting educational efforts since 1966 in the areas of science, nature study, health, development, and environment.

At the time it began its activities, CEE was perhaps the only organization actively engaged in environmental education in the country. While carrying out programmes in different parts of the country, it was located only at Ahmedabad. Within five years of activities, it was realized that for a country as vast as India and its diversity, physical presence was important for effective implementation. Based on this, the first regional office was opened for the Southern region in 1988-89. Since then it has been a conscious effort to have an office or presence in the geographical area of work.

After completing a decade of activities in 1994, it was decided to move more from environmental education to environmental action. This was an outcome of the learnings and experiences in the first ten years. CEE began more pilot, field-level and demonstration projects towards sustainable development which could be scaled-up and replicated. Within the next ten years, these projects formed a major chunk of Centre’s activities.

Today, CEE works for a wide range of sectors, target groups and geographical areas. CEE sees a major opportunity in the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-14) to further contribute towards sustainable development.