My grandfather was the first headmaster of the primary school attached to the Teachers’ Training College in Saidapet, Madras. This was in the 1940s, or probably even earlier. As a teacher in those times, he had designed “cinema boxes” for use in the classroom. The box was a regular cube made by the local carpenter. It had a glass door. Two thin wooden cylinders – like the belan we use to roll out chapathis – were fixed at the top and bottom. These could be rolled up or down by a handle fixed outside the box. A long strip of white cloth – his old dhotis folded and stitched, I suspect – was fixed and wound on both the top and bottom cylinders.

He drew, collected pictures, photographs or newspaper articles and stuck them on this piece of cloth. Subject-wise and topic-wise, he had made these ‘newsreels’ to teach history or science to young learners. He had retired decades before I was born, but he was at work in his room creating more material for these boxes, and as a child in the early 1970s I remember helping him sew or paste pictures to complete his project. As children we sometimes rotated only the top cylinder nonstop, so that the cloth screen-base was unwound and fell in a heap at the bottom!

This long nostalgic introduction is to contrast the difference technology has made in education today. Surely much more needs to be done to take the benefits across the country to all children, irrespective of class, caste or language. However, what is available – even though mostly to schools located in cities – is still significant.

The author is Chief Editor (ELT), Ratna Sagar P Ltd, New Delhi. She can be reached at nagalakshmi.bala@gmail.com.

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I grew up at a time when school teachers seemed distant figures, who were happy to be distant. That notion went right out of the window on the very day I wrote my last board examination. On that day, a group of us, elated students, visited our rather awe-inspiring teacher of mathematics to give her a gift. She treated us to cake and said thank you with tears in her eyes. She told us that she knew we were a mischievous lot who probably had fun at her expense in class every time her back was turned. She knew exactly which one of us was a mimic and who was the prankster.

At university, I had the good fortune to be taught by Russian teachers, who kept the doors to their homes open for their students. I have eaten meals with my teachers in Russia, I have heard exquisite poetry in their living rooms. From my American teachers I learned that you could be on first names with your professors and line up for a sandwich with them at lunch time, and keep your learning opportunities open throughout.

When I became a teacher, I am sure that those experiences shaped some of my beliefs about my role in my students’ lives. I know that I have consciously tried to develop a personal rapport with every student in every class I have taught. I know also that I am hardly unique in finding ways to build a personal connection with students.

Dr. Kamakshi Balasubramanian is an educator and writer with significant experience.

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Just over 60 years ago, in August 1949, a 15-year-old blind boy, Ved Mehta, moved to the United States of America to acquire an education. This was because his country of birth, India, offered no educational facilities to blind people. As a result, the blind had next to no employment opportunities back then (blind people worked as beggars, or lived on charity, or owned paan shops). Thus, the combined strength of negative social attitudes and structural barriers (lack of schools for blind children, lack of access to public transit, etc.) meant that most blind (like other disabled) people led lives mired in poverty and misery.

I speak here about the education of the blind because I am a student who happens to be visually impaired. For me, technology means access to education and employment opportunities, contact with the larger world, and, entertainment. Both the radio and computer technology have played a major role in my life. As Ved Mehta writes in Sound-Shadows of the New World (1986), the fifth in his memoir cycle, the Continents of Exile series, while he was studying at the Arkansas School for the Blind in Little Rock, Arkansas, the radio allowed him to stay in touch with the outside world and helped him to conceive the idea of pursuing a journalistic career (he went on to have a long stint with The New Yorker as a staff writer). So, technology helped launch him on a writing career, and 60 years later, technology is integral to my life and career as well.

When it was time for me to start my schooling, my parents sent me to the local school for “normal” children. Hence I did not learn Braille, which other blind children are taught at schools for the blind. My mother read aloud to me all kinds of books – school books, children’s literature, novels – right from early childhood till the completion of my undergraduation. She used to copy school notes and read them to me. I prepared for my examinations in this manner. Now I perform these activities with the help of my laptop.

When I entered high school, my maternal grandfather introduced me to the habit of listening to the radio, specifically to the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). I quickly became an avid listener. This was fortunate, for it helped to broaden my horizons dramatically. Every day for seven years, I used to listen to broadcasts by the BBC and other radio stations starting early in the morning and after returning home from school and later, college. Programmes on the arts, sciences, current affairs, in-depth analyses of international political events, and so on kept me riveted to the radio. I even participated in an international radio-play writing competition hosted by the BBC.

Early in this decade, when we bought a desktop computer, I was not able to use it. We were not aware of any assistive technology that would enable me to operate the computer on my own. However, this was to change soon. One day in 2002, my mother read an article in the magazine, India Today, about a screen reading software called JAWS for Windows, where the acronym JAWS expands to Job Access With Speech. This software has been developed by Freedom Scientific (www.freedomscientific.com), a company specializing in developing technology-based products to help the blind and people with learning disabilities to have equal access to information and computing, thus enabling them to improve their lives. Excited by the prospect of my achieving proficiency in using the computer, my parents bought this software. The purchase involved a considerable expense but looking back now, it seems entirely worth it.

I learned to operate the computer independently with the help of JAWS for Windows and was soon busy surfing the Net and being amazed at the whole new world that was opening up before me. I even set up a personal email account.

In June 2005, I wrote the entrance test to the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (CIEFL, now known as The English and Foreign Languages University, or EFLU) in Hyderabad and secured a seat. I was eager to do my M.A. there because their prospectus and website informed me that they offered special facilities for visually impaired students. These included computers complete with screen reading softwares like JAWS for Windows, and Kurzweil. This meant that I could be self-reliant in my studies. However, during my first semester at the institute, I did find it difficult to keep up with my assignments and other academic work, because it was not easy to find the required reading material in digital format. My professors and friends were very understanding and did their utmost in helping me with my education.

On the advice of Dr. Rajiv C Krishnan, one of my lecturers, I purchased a laptop early in my second semester. He said that it would be of great help in my studies. Looking back, I think it was the best thing I could have done. From then on, I did all my academic work on my laptop. My teachers gave me the required readings in digital format and allowed me to take all exams using my computer.

A friend who uses JAWS for Windows for his professional work once told me that the software would enable blind people to perform all computer-related work as well as (if not better than) sighted people. I know that he is right. But I am aware that all blind people do not have access to technology-based products because of the costs involved in procuring and using them. I know of visually impaired students who were not able to do well in their studies solely due to this reason. So in our country, I think it is the responsibility of institutions devoted to imparting education to make sure that visually impaired and other disabled students gain access to technology at the right times, thus enabling them to build their careers with greater success.

Thus, like Braille, which was a great innovation, technology-based products have the capability to improve the lives of blind people. This is certainly true in my case. After finishing my M.A. in English literature, I am now on the verge of completing my M.Phil from EFL University. My research work was made possible by the online library, questia.com. I have been able to gain higher education due to computer technology.

And now, I listen to BBC radio on the Net.

The author is an M.Phil student at the English and Foreign Languages University. He can be reached at aravind.ciefl@gmail.com.

If technology comes, can libraries be far behind? What should a school library do to show the way to teachers and management in the realm of technology? This was the question that I faced way back in 1997 as a librarian at Centre for Learning in Bangalore. We had an open library and a lively and interactive user community. Shouldn’t we leave things well alone? But there was the lure and the thrill of the possibilities of computerisation. Users from ages 5 to 55 functioning independently at the computer – to borrow, return, reserve, and search for whatever their strange hearts desired; and for the librarian? Liberation from catalogue cards, borrower cards, accession registers…. in brief, no more paper-work! That was a consummation devoutly to be wished. After a frustrating exploration of existing software; too cumbersome, too complicated, too expensive – a computer-crazy older student at the school came up with a programme that we worked on together. MERLIN he called it and magical it was. Children took to it effortlessly, adults with a little more hesitation but after a trial run, we knew we were going to create a record of sorts. One of the first school libraries to be fully computerized!

The author is a school library facilitator. She can be reached at usha.mukunda@gmail.com.

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Learning to use new technology is not easy; especially for a middle-aged teacher. They say that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. But when push came to shove, this old dog forced himself to learn several new tricks to survive the world of academia at the University of Georgia.

The day that I plodded along East Campus Road in Athens, Georgia, for my first class in Instructional Technology, the air was heavy and woolly, and the sky was growling pessimistic prophecies. In retrospect, I should perhaps have heeded the celestial warnings; instead, I entered the classroom on the 6th floor with naïve enthusiasm. The moment I breezed into the room, I knew that something was wrong: there was only one other student in class. On seeing me, the instructor’s face melted into a delicious smile of welcome; as if on cue, twenty odd students trooped in. God, I thought, was in his heaven and all was right with the world.

The feeling of effervescence lasted till the first set of assignments started rolling off the assembly line. One didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to complete the tasks, and I was confident that I would be able to do them without unduly exerting the old grey cells. It was while I was mentally patting myself on the back that the professor casually added: ‘Oh by the way, I would like you to use the Eudora software for your assignments, and Eudora is available only on Mac.’

The word ‘Mac’ set off a chain reaction. The heart parted from its moorings, the smile that had been splitting my face vanished, sweat oozed from every pore in my body, the stomach complained like a door that hadn’t been oiled in several years, and the jaw drooped like the proverbial lily. The reason for this spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings was fairly simple: no, it was not because I was an admirer of that potty poet Wordsworth. I had never used the Macintosh computer in my life! In fact, I had never used a computer till I became a graduate student in the University of Georgia in the fall of 1994. And for six months, I worked enthusiastically delving into the mysteries of the IBM PC. During this period of learning, I had shunned the Mac, treated it as some sort of pariah, and now, it was striking back.

The following week, the professor took us to the Macintosh computer lab, and I boldly went where at least this Upendran had never gone before. I saw the Apple logo on the computer screen, and unlike Eve I had no desire to taste the forbidden fruit. (You must remember that in January 1995, Microsoft had not started marketing Windows. To be able to operate a PC, you needed to know how to work with the keyboard. The Macintosh, on the other hand, made use of a graphic user interface, which required you to be adept in the use of the mouse.) For the next two hours the professor proceeded to provide us with a breathless summary of the working of the Macintosh computer. In a short space of one hundred and twenty minutes, he took us from the world of ‘Word’, to E-mail. Galin, Eric, World Wide Web and Netscape. And while he was busy telling us how to access the information highway, I was busy trying to unravel the mysteries of the numerous windows on the screen. ‘Click on gopher, pull down message and type in….’ went on the professor. The only thing that I wished to do was to click on ‘menu’, order a pizza, become a gopher and bury myself in some big hole. The lecture delivered at a frenetic pace totally disorganized my nervous system, and as I caught my reflection on the screen, an enigmatic expression on my face was there for all to behold. Had Leonardo Da Vinci seen me as I walked out of the lab, it would be my portrait, not the Mona Lisa’s that would be hanging in the Louvre today!

I doused the impulse to run home to India where the recommended means of doing one’s assignment is to use the ‘portable handheld communications inscriber’ (U. S Army jargon for a pen or pencil!). On returning to my apartment, my wife asked me to cheer up and proceeded to fortify me with a spicy dinner. I purred with satisfaction, and as it usually happens when one has a full tank, a grim determination crept in: I was going to master the Macintosh come what may. The next day, I began the onerous task of ‘attaching’ a document to an email message. Like all Taureans, I had planned well ahead as to how I would tackle the problem, and by the time I reached the computer lab, my fear of the Mac had all but dissipated. But as the saying goes, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. No sooner had I sat down to follow the procedure I had so carefully laid out, a classmate struck up a conversation during the course of which he informed me as to how he had succeeded in attaching a document. Being the computer novice that I was, I was more than willing to follow his instructions. I promptly retrieved a document on Bilingual Education from cyberspace, and sent it off to the professor. The following week I was told that I had merely succeeded in ‘pasting’ the document, and not in ‘attaching’ it. Lesser mortals, of course, would have been crushed. But I stood in total amazement, for yours truly had become the first member of his clan to ‘paste’ a document. History had been made!

I tackled the problem of ‘attaching’ the document once again, and this time it was a solo performance. I carefully followed the instructions that I had planned on using earlier, and it was with a sense of reverence that I clicked on the ‘Send’ button. But when the professor informed me the following week that he hadn’t received the message, a shadow began to fall on my earlier optimism. I had met a formidable enemy, and I decided that it was time to declare war on the Macintosh computer. I realized the only way to master the beastly machine was to have an in-depth knowledge of how its devious mind worked. For the next two weeks, I spent four to five hours every day working with the machine. It continued its non-cooperation movement, and did its utmost to drive me up the wall. But I didn’t roll my eyeballs and throw my hands into the air. I was made of sterner stuff; after all, I had been married for nearly 9 years. I wasn’t going to give in to a computer without a real fight. What was required was patience, and I had tons of it!

In the course of the next two months, I made it a point to park myself in the Macintosh lab whenever I found the time. Through all the grumblings, mumblings and a liberal sprinkling of juicy adjectives, a number of things happened. I began to have a healthy respect for the Macintosh, and it began to see me as someone who could not be easily ‘shooed away’. We began to tolerate each other, and didn’t go out of our way to burst each other’s bubble. I plodded on, struggled with my assignments, and strangely enough began to look forward to my sessions with ‘Mac’. By the time the semester came to an end, and I had successfully completed the assignments to my professor’s satisfaction, I realized I still hadn’t unlocked all the mysteries of this strange computer. I did what most men do when they don’t understand something. I fell in love with it. So much so, when I had saved enough money to buy a computer of my own, I bought myself a Macintosh!

The author teaches at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.