KITE launches First Bell 3.0 to support school learning with updated, interactive video classes
The sessions will no longer be alternatives for regular classes, but a support for students, KITE (Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education) officials said. The updated curriculum for Classes 1-10 will be used in these classes, while the videos for Classes 11 and 12 will remain unchanged.
'First Bell 3.0 should not be considered as an isolated element. Instead they should be seen as a part of the academic side of the learning management system,' said KITE CEO K Anvar Sadath. The classroom sessions, First Bell classes and the learning rooms provided in the 'Samagra' portal should be seen as three non-sequential elements for holistic education. 'But this doesn't mean that the classes deviate from the core academics part, into a tuition mode, giving tips and tricks,' he said.
'Over 1,000 videos have already been produced for this academic year,' said a senior official from KITE. The video production is currently under way at VICTERS studios in Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam and Kozhikode. 'For Classes 8-10, this year's sessions will be more textbook-oriented than previous years, with emphasis on academic activities and content provided for extra reading,' said the programme producer of high school content.
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Hindustan Times
18 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Review: Learning to Make Tea for One by Andaleeb Wajid
There are perhaps few emotions as universal, yet as little discussed, as grief. Although religions have built extensive rituals around death and mourning, they are not as preoccupied with coming to grips with grief, relegating it to the realm of the personal. While they do provide structure and direction at a time when everything seems unmoored, grief largely remains an individual struggle and many have to create anew ways to process their loss or help a grieving person. Days of darkness and fear: A Covid-19 Care Centre in New Delhi in May 2021. (Sanjeev Verma/HT PHOTO) 232pp, ₹499; Speaking Tiger When grief becomes a collective emotion, it can be even more incapacitating. That was the case during the summer of 2021 in India. As the Covid-19 pandemic's deadly second wave surged across the country, almost everyone knew someone who died or was on the verge of death. Hospitals, graveyards, and crematoriums ran out of space, and bodies piled up. Amid the strict lockdown and social distancing norms, quotidian rituals and coping mechanisms, such as spending time with loved ones, often became impossible. Like many other traumatic events affecting millions of people across India — the demonetisation of high-value rupee notes in 2016, leading to financial difficulties, or daily-wage labourers walking for hundreds of miles after the sudden imposition of a lockdown in 2020 — there seems to be a collective amnesia or, perhaps, wilful forgetting around these events. This is understandable to some extent. Life moves on and it can be unproductive or difficult to dwell on the past. And yet, there is value in memorialising such events and ensuring a collective reckoning. These can help provide closure and reduce the chances of repeating past mistakes. Although there have been a couple of fiction and non-fiction works about Covid-19 in India, Andaleeb Wajid's Learning to Make Tea for One: Reflections on Love, Loss and Healing is, to my knowledge, the only book-length memoir about losing loved ones during the pandemic. While the author's story is deeply personal and does not touch upon the misgovernance and apathy that caused immense suffering, it is nevertheless a powerful reminder of how these forces shaped people's lives — and deaths. In April 2021, everyone in Wajid's house contracted Covid-19, except her younger son, Azhaan. Wajid, her mother-in-law; and her husband, Mansoor, were admitted to Covid-19 wards. While she was eventually discharged, the other two remained hospitalised for weeks, their condition slowly deteriorating. Just before her 24th wedding anniversary, Wajid's mother-in-law died due to complications from the disease. A few days later, Mansoor passed away. But this was not her first brush with death or illness. When she was 12, her father died suddenly after a heart attack. 'For many years, my father's death defined me,' writes Wajid. 'While the tears dried up after the first few months or so after his death, the hollowness refused to be replaced by anything or anyone. I stuck to my tragedy like I meant it to embrace me and never leave me.' She also faced multiple miscarriages, including one where the doctor diagnosed that her baby had been dead in utero for more than 15 days. LISTEN: Remembering not to forget - Andaleeb Wajid on the Books & Authors podcastThe memoir not only delves into grief but also other formative life experiences. Wajid got married in college — her father had arranged it to her cousin before his own death. Women in her family did not work as their husbands were expected to provide for them. But to cope with the multiple miscarriages, she started applying for jobs — five years after she finished college. A memoir of this kind must have been harrowing to write. Yet, Wajid is powerful and poignant throughout. She is strikingly honest, even where it might have been difficult to talk publicly about personal matters. After a tragedy of this sort, one would give allowance to a person to indulge in self-pity or navel-gazing. Yet, Wajid is measured, not maudlin, despite the many sorrowful passages. She also does not eulogise Mansoor or turn him into a larger-than-life persona. She wonders, '...what he would think of this entire exercise, of me writing down my experiences of what happened to us, how our family was fractured and torn apart.' Her guess? He would be 'plain embarrassed'. One of the interesting aspects Wajid highlights is the gendered nature of grief. She writes about how 'men are allowed to move on and live their lives, get a fresh start, and women are just expected to live each day as it comes. To just keep surviving.' Thus, women have to 'keep moving on, but not moving on too much either'. Interestingly, many of the published personal recollections of the pandemic in India have been authored by women, though the number of such works is too few to glean common threads. Author Andaleeb Wajid (Courtesy the publisher) While Wajid had not set out to be an author and her writing journey was knotty, her prolificity — nearly 50 books in 15 years — is remarkable. As has been the case for many, writing became a form of therapy. 'Where it had been a form of escapism before, a way to make the lives of my characters far more interesting than the life I led, it became a way for me to cope with loss,' she explains. Her faith also helped her on her grieving journey. She describes her pilgrimage to Makkah with her sons after Mansoor's death: '... it healed something inside me that I thought had been broken and even shattered beyond repair.' Another thing that gave her peace was crocheting. While there might be as many ways of grieving as grievers, Wajid's memoir is an exemplar of the most universal way — memorialising people through words, elegies, and physical markers, such as gravestones or urns. As Wajid writes, 'Every time a reviewer for my books refers to me as Wajid, I feel a little lurch inside, as if they're talking about him [her father]. And every time my family sees his name next to mine on the many books I've written and published, I know it feels like he lives on.' Syed Saad Ahmed is a journalist and communications professional. In 2024, he was selected as a Boston Congress of Public Health Thought Leadership Fellow. He speaks five languages and has taught English in France.
Time of India
21 hours ago
- Time of India
Despite Goa's stable cultivation area, paddy production records a decline
Panaji: Paddy cultivation in Goa recorded a decline in the agricultural year 2024-25, as production dropped to 1.1 lakh tonnes — a sharp decrease of over 27,000 tonnes compared to the previous year's record high of 1.4 lakh tonnes, according to the data shared by the directorate of agriculture. This decline comes despite a marginal increase in the area under cultivation, which stood at 32,613 hectares in 2024-25, slightly higher than the 32,477 hectares reported in 2023-24. The figures suggest that while land dedicated to paddy farming remained stable, factors affecting the yield have taken a toll on production. Experts attribute the drop in productivity to Goa recording 4,400mm of rainfall from June to Sep 2024, marking it as the highest southwest monsoon rainfall in 120 years. 'Last year, the climate did not support paddy. In the kharif season, crops were submerged for 15-20 days in some areas. The impact of climate change is beyond anyone's control,' said K K Manohara, senior scientist, plant breeding, at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. He said, 'The only way forward is climate-resilient crops that can withstand incessant rainfall and submergence in low-lying areas.' The 2023-24 agricultural year saw Goa achieve its highest paddy output in five years, with 1.4 lakh tonnes produced from 32,477 hectares. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Emergency Generators in Yeba: (Prices May Surprise You) Emergency Generator | Search Ads Search Now Undo This marked a growth from the Covid-19 years, where production hovered around 1.3 lakh tonnes annually. However, the dramatic fall in 2024-25 reversed this positive trend. Compared to 2019-20, when production was 1.3 lakh tonnes from 34,698 hectares, the latest figures show a 15.2% decline in production, even though the area under cultivation has only dropped by 6% over the same period. Farmers have attributed the decline to a combination of factors. 'Two generations ago, the only means of survival for people in our village was farming and fishing; however, now the fields are fallow due to a lack of labour, present generations uninterested in agriculture, and non-profitability in yield,' said Anup Kudtadkar, a community farmer from Canacona. He said, 'Despite the availability of mechanised transplanters of paddy seedlings and harvesters, there aren't enough skilled workers available to execute the task. Moreover, the labour costs for post-harvest activities such as drying, sifting, and storing are very high in Goa.' Even subsidies from govt are delayed, Kudtadkar said, adding that unless there is profitability in this sector, the decline in paddy cultivation is inevitable. Stay updated with the latest local news from your city on Times of India (TOI). Check upcoming bank holidays , public holidays , and current gold rates and silver prices in your area. Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Raksha Bandhan wishes , messages and quotes !
The Hindu
a day ago
- The Hindu
This exhibition enables people to live and feel history
An abandoned chair balances precariously on a pile of rubble in the corner of the gallery of the Bangalore International Centre (BIC) in Domlur, where Un. Divided Identities, an interactive exhibition on the 1947 Partition, is still being set up. I flit between the various open doors scattered across the space, stepping past a myriad collection of objects across the gallery, including the frame of a charpoy, oil lamps, a dented tiffin carrier, choolah and a battered-looking metal trunk, all anachronistic enough to evoke a sense of loss, nostalgia and memory. The curatorial note, already up, explains what all these various objects seek to do collectively: help create a 'tactile, layered and visually compelling' encounter that enables visitors to 'pause, think and respond' to Partition. Un. Divided Identities, which has been conceptualised and curated by the Bengaluru-based ReReeti Foundation, was conceptualised around five years ago, says Tejshvi Jain, founder-director of ReReeti. Their first major initiative, she says, was an online workshop with university students in India and Pakistan where, 'we looked into themes of identity, migration, loss, conflict resolution and things like that.' One of the planned outcomes of the project, right from the start, was to have an exhibition around lesser-known stories about Partition because, 'whatever is known about Partition in textbooks is the political version.' To make it relatable to young people, however, 'it has to have a personal connect, not a political one,' believes Tejshvi, adding that the exhibition sought to bridge the gap between the political and the personal, drawing on lived experiences gathered via oral history interviews in addition to historical research. The plan was to have a physical exhibition, but then the second wave of COVID-19 happened, so they decided to pivot and do a digital version instead, she recounts. That is how Un. Divided Identities first emerged in October 2022 as an interactive, choice-based digital exhibition, conceived in partnership with the British Council and Glasgow Life Museums. The exhibition, co-created with eight young people of South Asian descent, located in both India and Glasgow, attempted to amplify the voices and experiences of ordinary people, enabling viewers to step into the lives of Partition survivors, virtually experiencing the hard choices and collective trauma they endured. 'They're put in the shoes of someone who has encountered Partition,' she says. 'We wanted them to not just read about history, but feel it.' Additionally, because the Partition story could not be told only from India's perspective, ReReeti partnered with schools in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and did workshops on how to conduct and document oral history interviews. 'So suddenly history became alive for them, became interesting. It went beyond just facts, dates and events and became more people's stories, more personal and more relevant to them,' she says, pointing out that much of what came out of these students' oral interviews fed into the main narrative. Now, three years later, Un. Divided Identities has been reimagined as a physical, experiential space. Designed by Aditi Dhamija, in collaboration with the Bangalore International Centre, the exhibition allows visitors to physically experience the weight of this mass migration event, which affected nearly 14 million people. 'The content is the same, but the way we have interpreted it is different,' says Tejshvi, who believes that having it in the physical format helps create a space for communities where communication can happen, which is 'missing in the digital format because you are consuming it yourself.' And in an age where 'this question of borders keeps coming up', having physical spaces for these conversations are essential since it allows young people to 'broaden their vision, absorb, see the multiple perspectives, analyse and then come to their own judgement,' explains Tejshvi, After all, 'everything going on in today's world is deeply rooted in history,' she says. 'It never leaves you.' Un. Divided Identities: An Interactive Exhibition on the 1947 Partition will be on show till Sunday, August 10, between 11 am and 8 pm. To know more, visit
