THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Classrooms should be places where excitement for science is created among students, G Madhavan Nair, former ISRO chairman, has said. He was addressing a seminar on ‘Science Education in the Digital Age’ organised by Talentspire, a collective of academics, research scholars and technologists here on Friday.
“Children today seek to learn outside classrooms. This should change, and it is imperative that schools and educational institutions ensure that their quest for knowledge is addressed at schools,” he said.
Around 200 delegates, including principals, management members and teachers from across the state attended the seminar. Modern technologies in teaching cannot replace the actual teacher, said M Chandradathan, scientific advisor to the Chief Minister and former director of VSSC and ISRO.
He was speaking at an interaction programme organised as part of the seminar. “Though modern technologies increase the responsibilities of teachers, students would be benefited a lot. But the technologies can never replace the relation a teacher would have with his students,” he said.
He urged teachers and other stakeholders to ensure that the ideas generated in campuses have a logical conclusion. “In most cases, ideas generated in educational institutions would not materialise. They will remain as reports or theses. This should change. Ideas should transform into products or services for the betterment of mankind,” he said.
P P Chandrachoodan, former programme officer, Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, called for interdisciplinary interactions. He stressed on the need for identifying the talents of students.
S K Satheesh, chairman, Divecha Centre for Climate Change, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, asked educational institutions to focus on skill development of students to help them in future careers.
Other speakers were Suresh Das, former executive vice-president, KSCSTE, Radhika Ramachandran, director, Space Physics Laboratory, ISRO, and M Muneer, expert columnist, management consultant.
Achuth Shankar S Nair, head, Department of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, University of Kerala, was the moderator.