A tech-genius in a school of Dexter’s clones, Irtiza managed to break into the school administration’s network and found questions for the exams.
“It was there on the server,” he explains innocently. His teacher clarifies, however, that he immediately told them of what he had done. “Only the poor teacher had to make a new set of questions,” she said.
Discovery Centre School is different from its other branches of the Beaconhouse School System as it focuses on computer-based learning. “We don’t fill textbooks but focus on real learning,” said its chief, Humera Shahab. Each student has a computer.
The school follows the same curriculum as other schools but it makes the students focus on practical learning as early as class I. “Our class II students made a documentary on frog movements using the camera themselves,” boasted Shahab, adding that all classes have two such projects each year.
The school has also adopted a no-uniform policy to promote open discussions between students and teachers. At one point, the administration even introduced robotics as a subject but it was removed later to allow students to focus on their core subjects.
Cyber Fair Competition
A group of eight students are the winners of the International Cyber Fair Competition for this year. Erum Abdul Razzaq, Irtiza Hasan, Hamd, Muhammad Hasan, Arsalan Jalal, Emaad, Omer and Ayesha worked on their project “Revival of the Sunday Bazaar” and won the platinum award for the competition designed on the category of Local Attractions (Natural and Man-Made).
The students came up with the theme on their own by focussing on the most popular attraction for the people of Karachi. “We aimed at winning and therefore we prepared keeping the project in mind,” said the faculty incharge of the project, Hira Khatri.
The International Cyber Fair is a competition held every year and it brings together 2.5 million students from across 115 countries. This year’s theme was ‘Believe and Unite’ with eight different categories.
According to Khatri, it is the student’s enthusiasm and intelligence that gives them an edge. “We have to work hard to keep up with the pace of the students,” she confessed.
The project took two weeks and all this time Khatri had to deal with parents, concerned about the safety of their children who will be doing field research. “The parents dropped the children themselves to Sunday bazaar and we had to convince and coax people into giving interviews,” she added.
The project is unique as it involves a research, findings, survey and the presentation all uploaded to a website. “We used the web-easy professional software and designed a website to display our project,” explained a student, Emaad.
Recalling a funny incident from the competition, the headmistress said that the representative teachers on the Sunday Bazaar project received job offers from the UK because the people who saw the project thought that we were poor and unemployed people from a bazaar in Pakistan.
Currently, the students are busy making a short film on Ghana, which is part of their Social Studies and English project. They aim to compare the situation of Ghana to that of Pakistan. The process of researching, acting and filming will enable these students to not only learn about the topic but also to find out what the people are like, what they wear and other smaller details.
The same students won the Gold award on a project made on Manghopir when they participated in the 2009 Cyber Fair competition. “However we could not go to the place in person due to security concerns and hence we came second,” said Irtiza.
Besides these two projects, the class has been active since their grade V, having participated in an international monster making competition project in the year 2007 in Mr Smith’s International projects. “Our monster ‘Bil Batauri Nussa Chauri’ won the most votes by the peers,” said Hamd happily.
Besides, the class has also made a documentary on how to save electricity.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 30th, 2010.
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