In the last few weeks, I've posted 2 posts on Education & India (Part 1 & Part 2). There, I had said that I'd be posting a version of the draft I had created of the above titled post, a few years ago.
It was 28th or 29th April, 2009 when, in a seminar, in a group of 10, we were told to come up with a plan and layout of our dream school. We made a rough version of what is posted below. On coming back from the seminar, in the few days that followed, I realized the importance of that project and how much it meant to me. For the same, I completed what I had started as a competition, in the seminar and the outcome is as below.
My Dream School
In India, and for that matter all the world
over, schools are also known as the ‘Temples of Knowledge’. But, in India,
temples are built after consulting architects but not the schools. Thus, today,
I decided to give my dream school a real pictorial representation with the
necessary documentation.
My dream school is a two-storey building
and technologically advanced. It has all the modern facilities that the world
has never seen before. It is a school every student would want to be in. This
school is a secondary school i.e. for students in 9th to 12th
standards. Everything in the school is in the interior so that bad weather
conditions do not affect learning. The school will not have air conditioners
because we believe the students need to be taught to help in solving the
problem of global warming from the schooling days itself to create awareness.
The timing of the school will be from 9a.m. to 4 p.m. with a maximum of 5
lectures a day.
The ground floor has the classrooms for
standards 9th and 10th along with the locker rooms of
students belonging to these classes. The entrance to the main school building
is also through the ground floor. There is also the Audio Visual room, dining
hall, auditorium, science laboratory, and the basketball, volleyball, and
badminton courts on the ground level.
The first floor has classrooms for
standards 11th and 12th. There are also locker rooms for
these students. The tennis court and arrangements for table tennis, chess,
carom, and other indoor games are also made on this floor along with a separate
room for gym. There is a swimming pool and a cyber room on this floor.
The second floor has a football field and a
garden. There are also changing rooms for boys and girls who play football
here.
Everything is described in the points
hereon:
1) The whole school building is a Wi-Fi
zone with 802.11n wireless network and an internet speed of 2 gb/sec providing
information to the students whenever they require without any kind of delays.
Each student will be given a username and the student can access the resources
on the network if and only if the student logs in from his username after
giving the confirmatory password.
2) Teaching in Classrooms: The teaching in
the classrooms of this school will be through video conferencing and video
telecast on the laptops/tablets of every child, thus making the environment
more private so that each student can learn according to his abilities to cope
up a subject. It also ensures that the same teacher can teach and record all
the lessons for a particular standard and then be with the students to solve
their doubts, if they have any, with no worry about her next class. If a
student misses a particular class, he can approach the cyber room coordinator
and have the last class broadcast to him again personally, during break hours
or post-college hours so that he/she doesn’t feel the burden of studying a step
above directly. Each lecture will be of the duration of an hour with a break of
ten minutes between two lectures. The attendance in these classrooms will be
taken by swiping fingers. There will be one fingerprint scanner on each side of
the door to each room in the school and the students, teachers and other staff
will have to swipe before they actually enter the class.
3) Girls & Boys Locker Rooms: The
locker rooms for girls and boys are provided separately and that too on the
basis of the standard they are studying in. The students can keep all their
stationary and laptops in these lockers so that they don’t have to bring these
from home daily. There are also restrooms in these locker rooms. There is also
provision of showers in the locker rooms so that students can freshen up
themselves before heading for the next class.
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| Ground Floor Layout - My Dream School |
4) Dining Hall: The dining hall of the
school will have various kinds of food available, but, no two cuisines will be
available on the same day. It will cover a variety of parts of meal like
salads, starters, beverages, soups, main course, desserts, etc. The students
can have the food of their choice and preference. They won’t have to pay
anything extra for the food. However, the service can be accessed only in the
afternoon lunch time and not in any other break.
5) Basketball, Volleyball & Badminton
Courts: Sports builds the body and that’s the reason there are various
arrangements for sports in this school. In their sports periods, the students
will have access to all the different sports arrangements in the school and
they have to decide what they want to do in that period. This room on the
ground level has arrangements for students aspiring to play basketball,
volleyball and badminton. We also have a court of beach volleyball with beach
sand on it. There are also coaches available, two for each sport; so that one
can teach the game and at the same time the other can be the referee and take
care that students don’t get indulged into foul play and play the game in all
its spirit. Also, there will be other ground staff so that the courts and
equipment is maintained properly.
6) Science Laboratory: All the laboratory
apparatus will be made of borosil so that it doesn’t break easily and is heat
resistant. The laboratory is spacious with enough apparatus to suffice 50
students at a time. Also, the teaching for the science practical’s will be done
through video conferencing in the same way as other classes but an attendant
will be available in the laboratory with sufficient knowledge of the
experiments in case students need help.
7) Auditorium: The auditorium of the school
is spacious with a seating arrangement of 1000 people and extends onto the
first floor. There are two large LED television sets, on either side of the
stage, which will display the events happening on the stage live. Also, the
auditorium will have the best possible audio surround system and more than 15
speakers on each side. It will also have a hi-def video camera to record what
is happening and broadcast it simultaneously.
8) Audio Visual Room: The Audio Visual Room
of this school is the place where all the data of the auditorium will be
received and processed. It also has a beautiful LED television and multiple
computers with onboard video cards to process videos fast. The recordings for
the various lectures will also be done in the studio in this room. The people
sitting in the room for editing will be those who know how to use video
software as well as have knowledge of at least one subject so that they can
understand the lecture and edit it accordingly.
9) Tennis Court, Table Tennis, Carom and
Chess: The facilities for lawn tennis and the other indoor games mentioned will
be at par with the world’s best. The information regarding coaches and other
staff is as in the previous sports room.
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| First Floor Layout - My Dream School |
10) Swimming Pool: The swimming pool on the
first level is a 10-lane swimming pool and also has depths of up to 11 feet. There
will be four life guards in the premises of the pool at all times. They will
also coach students and help them if they need any. There are also changing rooms for males and females separately in the room.
11) Gym: This is the room that can help
students to maintain their body well and also is useful for warm-up for
students who are representing the school in different sports in sporting
events. The gym will be very well-equipped with paraphernalia suiting the
teenagers.
12) Cyber Room: This is the hub of the
whole school. The server of the whole school and all the data of the school
will be stored in this room. The room will also serve as the transmission
center of the Wi-Fi network of the school. All the student records will be
stored in this room. The entrance to this room also requires the retinal scan
of the school employees and any student is restricted in this premises.
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| Second Floor Layout - My Dream School |
13) Football and hockey field: There are
arrangements for these games on the second level with a sun-roof on the top so
that even during the rains, they can enjoy the games. The school hopes to
nurture each student in at least one sport so that he excels in it. The coaches
and ground staff are also available here.
14) Garden: The garden of the school would
be maintained by the science club of the school. Along with regular plant
species, there would be plants grown with the old Japanese art of bonsai.
Miscellaneous features:
15) Board: The school will be affiliated to
the state board so that it ensures covering most of the necessary topics and
clears all of them right from the basics.
16) Energy: The premises will be using
energy provided through solar panels situated on the roof of the football
field. The hot water required in the bathrooms in gym and locker rooms will be
heated too through solar panels.
17) Water:
The water used in the building will be recycled and purified to reuse
again. The drinking water in the coolers will be UV and RO purified.
18) Notice Boards: The notices of various
events happening in the school will be conveyed to the students by the medium
of notice boards. These will be put up outside each room conducting the event.
For example, the sports camp notices will be put up outside the respective
sport room. The auditions for the dramas, etc, will be put up outside the
auditorium. The notices will be available together in one place i.e. the
‘Notices’ section of the login page which they must open to login to their
school accounts.
19) Newspaper: The school will have a
weekly newspaper service with the reports of events of the school, the seven most
important news of the world, one interview with a renowned personality. It will
be managed by the school students along with the help from one teacher
completely devoted to the cause. Also, the editor to the newspaper will be one
of the student members of the newspaper club.
19) Annual Magazine: The school will
publish an annual magazine emphasizing on happenings of the entire year with
reports, articles and drawings made by the students themselves.
20) Houses: The school will be divided in
four houses on equal basis and the students will have competitions on various
topics throughout the year. The house which is the overall winner of these
competitions according to the points will be given a trophy on the annual day
of the school. There will be different criterions like academics, sports,
co-curricular subjects, and other competitions. The individual criterion
winners will also be given trophies.
21) Student Council: There will be a
representative to the student body known as the student council. It will have a
lot of power and can change the way many things happen in the school to the
need of the students, but, in consultation with the teachers and principals.
The student council will have three levels of representatives. A) School
Captains and School Vice-Captains and Sports Captains and Sports Vice-Captains,
B) House Captains, C) Assistant House Captains. The duty of the house captains
is to nurture talent within the house with the help of their assistants. The
school captains will cater to the needs of the school and the sports captains
to the problems of the school with respect to sports.
22) School Events: Annual Cultural Day will
be one of the most of the important events in the school. Various felicitations
will be done on that day. The school will have Annual Science Exhibition held
every year. This will be the chance for aspiring scientists to showcase their
talents.
23) Library: The college library will be an
extensive e-book library supported by hard cover copies.
24) Principal’s room: Not very different
from the principal’s rooms around the world already.
25) Staff room: For the teachers, basic
amenities.
26) Office: For the accounts and the other
clerical records.
P. S.: The last 4 points, were added during a recent revision and so do not find a place in the layouts, anywhere.
Promising layout. But wouldnt it be good enough to add an extra floor? I m still searching for things that you have missed in your school so you can heave a sigh of relief because it is a near perfect model of an ideal school. I would pray that practically this turns into a reality some day.
ReplyDeleteWell done my boy! Pretty decently put up.. :)
Dont mind but I wouldnt give you a 5 star. 4 should be enough. (Just dont want to make you complacent) :P
A very good layout and yes you do need to add an extra floor for principal's cabin, staff room,library etc. And probably that extra floor should be the first floor, thus raising each floor by one.
ReplyDeleteAlso (since it is not clearly mentioned what 'type' of notice boards) the notice board too should be computerized rather than the usual paper and pins. Like every notice that is updated on the college website for students should mention tags like : 'science club', 'football' etc. so as soon as the notice is updated on the website, it appears on the screen outside it's respective classes or rooms.
And one more addition, plainly because I love animals, you could also (if funds permit)make a separate room for animals and keep a few like dogs or cats and a keeper for them. So during breaks or after school hours, one can play around and also learn to take care of one's environment! It helps bond with the nature. Many parents don't let children get home pets as it inconveniences them and they have to be taken care of well, which can be difficult. So this will prove beneficial for such students. I would especially love this area and if I were to join your school, you would find me spend most of my time here!!! ;)
In all a very good layout and hope this dream turns into a reality soon! Good luck!
Setu,
ReplyDeleteYou have not written enough about the quality of teachers and your views on it. One of the key reasons people go to school is to learn and the quality of learning is a function of teachers.
regards, Ravi