Mumbai: CBSE seeks, gets American School’s virtual content

MUMBAI: The American School of Bombay has opened up its gates to provide its academic content for schools across India. First among them, the CBSE reached out for accessing ASB’s virtual content for its about 20,000 schools.
The three-campus school is now working across eight time zones, albeit via virtual mode. After the school was shut for the spring break, close to 25% students and faculty could not fly back as India imposed travel restrictions. Now in its second week, the virtual school has its elementary, middle and high school back on its feet with faculty posting lectures, teacher assistants running follow-up activities, tech teams helping families work with edtech and counsellors holding sessions for the wellbeing of students and families. There is more: live chat sessions with class teachers, leadership-faculty meetings and sessions between principals and parents.
“Kids are cooped up in their houses with no access to playgrounds, open spaces or interactions. So we are committed to making our virtual school super-engaging and fun. We have to fill the void created by this unprecedented disruption. We need to make the new normal lovely and inviting. Kids need to want to attend virtual school, just as much as they did school on our campuses,” said Craig Johnson, head of school, ASB.
A CBSE official saw some ‘Read Aloud Stories’ put out by ASB and reached out to Johnson for permission to use them. “We have invested a lot in developing outstanding content for our virtual school. We were ready for something like this—obviously not of this magnitude, but we were ready to go virtual. So now that we have it we must share it. We would like to open up large parts of our curriculum and resources for anyone who may want to use it. From read-aloud stories to our physical education classes, to our IB music, drama, or physics. We are working on how we can make what ASB has available to any school or board wanting to use them,” he added.
Each level at the ASB has its own plan and technologies they work with. The elementary school works with See-saw in which recorded lectures are posted for students to view at their convenience, they can then complete activity challenges and provide feedback. The middle school uses Google classroom and Powerschool that allows for recorded sessions, live interactions, discussion boards. The high school uses Google meet and Zoom.
“There are norms on what to wear, where to be seated, how to interact,” added Johnson. Parental nod is obtained for oneon-one sessions with children and these are recorded by ASB’s tech team. With parents seated by side of kids for some interactions, parents get a sneak view.