Jumpstart 2016 passes school with flying colours

Started in 2009, as a series of Masterclasses, this project has seen exemplary growth as a platform for ideation, training, development and collaborations in the world of children’s content. A great connecting ground for everyone involved in creating and disseminating children’s content, it was also a great training opportunity for writers, illustrators alike. With varying themes each year, publishers, artists, educationists, creators, art designers, writers, cartoonists, media professionals and the likes, attended the event. 

This year, ‘Jumpstart Goes to School’ provided a 360 degrees view of education in theory and in practice. The content creators and educationists came together and talked about the role of technology, design thinking, empathy and humour in children’s educational materials.

The major talking points included:

The evolution of pedagogy: We must engage with questions about teaching-learning transaction, sensory development and skill building, looking at how developers can create curricula to address these needs. This point raised by Ken Spillman, the Australian author was about social learning and resilience that can be taught to children through stories. He pointed out that today’s transitional times need tremendous amounts of unlearning for the real learning in tandem with the time to happen.

Technology and the teaching-learning transaction: Talking about how technology enhances education and enriches the learning process, this year’s Jumpstart addressed whether technology can help critical development of students and bring them to learn at the same pace. Adding to the technology vs print debate, Vineet Gupta, pro-VC, Ashoka University, shared that technology is just an enabler and ‘content is king’. He urged the educationists and authors/ publishers to exchange, interact and discuss how they could benefit from each other’s learning.

Future of innovation in education: This looked at the direction in which education is heading, and examined new forms of learning and their applications in the future.

Jumpstart 2016 also witnessed three well-attended Masterclasses.  

Digital Learning Design Masterclass: Dealing with the interaction between didactic concept and technical implementation, this Masterclass focused on how the intention of the narration forms a design strategy that can bring forth innovation in the context of eLearning. Dr Florian Sochatzy whose research interests include multimedia textbooks and the effects and requirements of digital learning led the Masterclass. Since 2011, he has also been the managing director of the Institute for Digital Learning.

Writers’ Masterclass: Storytelling is as old as humanity itself and has played a central role in structuring ways of seeing and imagining. Books usurped oral traditions in many societies but, in those same societies, there is now a tendency to associate books with study, not story. This and more was discussed in this Masterclass.  

Illustrators’ Masterclass: The daylong session tried to explain the creative process that goes into writing picture books. The workshop explained the techniques used and how the work of an illustrator affects the children, teachers and the authors. It also discussed how the power of picture books could be used in classrooms to develop children into better readers and writers.