Color The Worksheet Contest!

Tata Sky has come up with a new contest for kids. As mentioned in my previous posts, Tata Sky is positively aggressive is promoting the “Fun with Learning” concept.

This time they are choosing to invoke the Leonardo Da Vinci/Pablo Piccaso in your child. They have announced this colouring contest for kids called “Colour the worksheet contest”.
This contest is open only to students of schools enrolled under the Tata Sky School contact programme. To participate in this contest, the students need to colour the worksheets received from their schools and submit them to Tata Sky through their respective schools. The age limit for participating kids is 3-7 years. The last date of entry for this contest is Tuesday, 31 March 2009. Also, it is the schools that need to send the entries; participants cannot send it directly to Tata Sky. The entries will be judged on the basis of imagination, colour concept, innovative use of drawing and colouring material by an internal panel of judges and exciting prizes given to winners.

This contest appears to be fun, I remember the time when I would get excited about these things too. These contests are very encouraging and motivating especially for 3-7 year olds. For them, winning or losing doesn’t mean much. It’s all about participating. Get any of the kids you know to participate in it. And who knows you might have just played your role in the making of a Leonardo Da Vinci!

The details of this contest can be seen here:

http://www.tatasky.com/offers-color-worksheet-contest.html

Learning Is So Much Fun With Tata Sky DTH !

Parents often complain about the time their kids spend in front of the TV and how it affects their studies. However, proponents of television have always argued that TV can be a fun learning medium for kids. Till now, learning on TV, was restricted to a “Sesame street” or “Dora the explorer” kind of kids programs where puppets and cartoons taught children about new things. However, it was very one-dimensional and not interactive at all restricting the potential of the medium.

Tata Sky services by pioneering interactive services like Actve stories and Actve learning adds a new dimension to this TV learning process. As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, Actve learning is a quiz based educational service covering math, GK & science for children in age group of 7-12 years while Actve stories is TV based story delivery that children can read and listen to it at their own pace.

Recently, as a part of Actve stories, Tata Sky had launched the Great Personalities Week. (Scheduled to run till 3rd Feb 2009) the series brings about information about the lives of our great leaders who have made significant contributions for the country in a fun and informative way. It is designed to teach and narrate the life proceedings of such great personalities, including the immediate past president of India, Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam, Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi. The list continues as the series continues.

I could not but help think of my own years of learning history, those dreary lessons where teachers in their monotones tried to drill impossible to remember facts in our heads. I had developed such a dislike for history remembering all those dates and treaties! History seems such fun with these interactive stories. It would develop an interest in these young children. I wish we too had such a fun way of learning history as kids.

I think this is just the beginning and interactive television shall soon be the new medium for education. Learning from visuals is much more effective than learning from texts. As this trend catches on, Tata Sky will have a big captive audience among the school going kids. Tata Sky is promoting this service in schools across India and has met with a positive response from children as well as teachers. These services have potential to be valuable teaching aid for the teachers as well.

If you have young kids at home, just put on these services for them and make their learning fun. You won’t have a reason to complain about TV anymore!
To check out the whole dedicated website created by Tata Sky for its interactive services for kids, follow this link

http://www.tatasky.com/education/index.html

Tata Sky DTH for Kids...2!

To continue my earlier thoughts on TS for kids, I’ll talk about the remaining part of the Actve kids series. Yes the Actve stories and the Actve Learning bits.

Actve Stories

Actve stories is TV based story delivery that children can read and listen to it at their own pace. The service features new stories from Jataka tales, Panchatantra, Hitopadesh and Indian mythology everyday in English and Hindi.
Actve stories also incorporates excitement through contests like “Tell – a – Tale” and also gives students the opportunity to read original stories authored by teachers across the country.

Actve stories help children hone their Hindi as well as English reading skills as well as enhance their vocabulary. The service features non animated sequential pictures depicting story with a text strip at the bottom. This strip has the story typed in legible font. Children can take as long as they want to read the text. Just like a page in a story book, the text strip and the picture will not change until children are ready to move ahead.
Further stories are supported by clear and audible voiceovers. Children can listen to audio as many times they wish. Thus helping them to read and pronounce every word on the screen.

Actve Learning

Actve learning is a quiz based educational service covering math, GK & science for children in age group of 7-12 years.

From Monday to Saturday, each day children would be presented with questions on Science, Maths or GK. Subjects are divided into 2 levels of complexity, level 1 broadly covers topics taught in class 1-3 and level 2 covers topics taught in class 4-5.

On Sundays children can participate in Actve genius contest and win Rs.2500 each week. The contest comprises of a mix of questions that are featured on actve learning through the week. Each level of actve learning needs to be completed in 30 mins. All question screens display question number, score and remaining time in which the quiz needs to be completed.
Actve learning ensures that the children learn as they proceed in the quiz. If the answer selected is incorrect the correct answer is highlighted, thus helping children learn on the go. At the close of each level, children are presented with scorecard. This allows them to evaluate their performance and identify areas which they could better

This concludes my perspectives on the interactive services for children. In summary one can consider these services as a great recreational aid to a child’s education process. Tata Sky has gone the distance to even get these interactive services for kids available in schools across the country, thereby adding to the kids learning experience in schools. It’s quite a corporate social responsibility lesson and hence merits a standalone post, which shall be created real soon!