CBSE Delhi Region Java Fundamentals In Class Training , workshop for teachers.

A two-day workshop on 1 and 2 July, 2013 was held at SLS DAV Public School, Mausam Vihar in collaboration with Oracle Academy under the auspices of CBSE to offer Java Fundamentals free of cost to teachers across India. Once teachers were enrolled, they were to follow a rigorous eight week online, virtual training. Teachers were able to login to the Oracle Academy website to access study materials on the following softwares:

Alice a very interactive development environment that is used to introduce basic programming concepts to students in a fun and engaging way. The Alice 3 tool can also be used to develop extensive animations. Greenfoot - This tool can be used to develop extensive games in Java. Creating games will help to keep students focused on learning Java fundamentals and thereby help those students to be successful as they venture into more complicated Java programming constructs. Eclipse A tool which teaches basic java constructs [gallery columns="2"]

In addition to the study- material available online in the form of pdf files, video demonstrations are also available on various topics. Twice a week, teachers have online chat sessions with their online instructors where they gain clarity on the topics covered during the week. Teachers also had attempt online evaluation. Our marks in the exams were as follows:

Teacher Name Mid Term Exam Score Final Exam Score Ekta Chitkara 86% 89% Meenu Kumar 89% 90%

Both exams consisted of 50 MCQ questions. After clearing both the exams, we attended the in-class training. Teachers of the following schools also attended the training

DPS Faridabad DAV Narela Army Public School, Dhula Kuan Sanskriti School Tagore International School, East of Kailash St. Georges School Raja Ram Mohan Roy School, Rohini Sachdeva Public School, Rohini K R Mangalam, Vikaspuri DPS Panipat SLS DAV Public School, Mausam Vihar

The training was presided over by Ms. Radha Mahalaxmi, Additional Director, CBSE. Also present were our online instructors Mr. Jian Li, Principal Instructor, Oracle Academy Asia-Pacific region (who had come all the way from Beijing, China) and Ms. Geetanjali Singh, marketing manager and Instructor, Oracle Academy.

Ms. Radha Mahalaxmi congratulated the teachers on completing their course and emphasised the need to constantly update ourselves. She was happy that the teaching profession consisted more women than men. She also stated that CBSE would soon organise a competition where the teachers who had undergone the Java Fundamentals course would submit investigatory projects based on the CCE curriculum.

On the first day of the class training, teachers were given hands-on training on Alice by the two instructors Mr. Jian Li and Ms. Geetanjali Singh. In the afternoon session, we were informed that we had to develop a small project using Greenfoot. We formed a group with St. Georges School's teachers- Ms. Shubra and Mr. Deepak Kumar. On the second day, we developed a project for Pre-Primary children to facilitate their counting skills taking direction from Mr. Jian Li. Later we also showcased our project to the remaining teachers in the workshop and won a huge round of applause!

At the end of the second day, all teachers were awarded course completion certificates from CBSE and Oracle Academy.

Report by Meenu Kumar and Ekta Chitkara. Computer Dept.