| Home | “This will be an excellent way for those who live far from a gurukula to get an education with devotees.” |
INTRODUCTION | PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS | FINANCIAL CONSIDERATIONS
Gurukula is our most important project. If the children are given a Krsna Conscious education from early childhood then there is great hope for the future of the world. His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (Founder/Acarya of the Hare Krsna Movement in a letter to his married disciples, Dayananda Dasa and Nandarani Devi Dasi, January 27, 1973)
The idea is great! As an alternative for those who are unable to situate their children in an available gurukula, and are strongly reluctant to risk exposing their children to public school, cyber-education will become a very viable alternative, once properly established. The value is obvious! It’s an important step in the development of our educational alternatives. Romapada Svami (GBC for New York, New Jersey and the Midwestern USA)
The cyber gurukula [proposal] is a wonderful idea! …Please keep me informed. …there are so many kids going to karmi school. …What a disaster. [We] will lose a whole generation. I think the time has come for some practical solution like this. My heart is aching to see all of the lost kids. Please let me know how I can help. Bir Krsna Gosvami (North American GBC Chairman)
This sounds very good. This will be an excellent way for those who live far from a gurukula to get an education with devotees. Urmila Devi Dasi (Principal, ISKCON School, Hillsborough, NC, USA, Associate Editor and Education Columnist of Back to Godhead Magazine, Member of the Educational Advisory Board to the GBC Ministry of Educational Development)
1. This is not a proposal for putting gurukula curriculum on the Internet, although that is a definite possibility for the future. This proposal is for the interaction that normally goes on in a classroom, to go on over the Internet, by using “cyber classrooms” and conventional private email.
2. Being the sysop (the person in charge of the overall administration of the “cyber gurukula” school) would involve pretty much everything that a gurukula headmaster normally does, except he or she wouldn’t have to maintain and protect the physical bodies of the students, nor of the teachers at remote locations. In addition, it would involve adding new users to the system and removing ones who are no longer part of the school, creating and deleting conferences, adding and deleting subscribers to the conferences, helping users with problems, seeing that software glitches get fixed, seeing that lost data gets recovered, etc.
3. A copy of the WWW-COM software (see www.dasya.com), or a similar conferencing type of website would be set up so that there is one conference for each cyber gurukula “classroom” (a particular course, a particular teacher or teachers, and a particular group of students.)
4. If a copy of the WWW-COM software were used, it would probably be best to use it as it is, so devotees who are already familiar with WWW-COM, wouldn’t have to learn something new, and so future versions of WWW-COM could be easily implemented.
5. There could also be administrative conferences of various sorts, school departmental conferences, a PTA conference, a “teachers only” conference, a “parents only” conference, a “students only” conference, etc.
6. All parents, teachers and students would have private email addresses.
7. Each teacher would have the teacher’s edition of the courseware* for each course that he or she teaches.
8. The students and teachers could ask questions, give answers, etc. in the cyber classroom, or by private email.
9. “Homework” assignments would usually be given in a cyber classroom, but special assignments could also be given by private email.
10. A “user” list of all of the administrators, teachers, parents, students, etc. would be available to everyone. This would give the names, physical locations and email addresses of all users (administrators, teachers, parents, students, etc.).
11. Teachers would be able to give “open book” tests directly to the students.
12. Teachers would be able to give “closed book” tests through a parent or other designated local adult.
13. Completed tests would be sent privately to the teacher.
14. The sysop could have a copy of all courseware*, and would be able to monitor everything.
15. Grades would be sent privately to students, and optionally to parents also.
16. Report cards would be sent privately to both students and parents.
17. All private email interactions between teachers and students could be automatically sent to the parents, if the parents so desired.
18. The gurukula would be a full time K-12 school on the Internet that teaches all subjects, and that always responds to students within 24 hours (except on weekends), and at certain times of the day within minutes.
19. The initial startup costs of purchasing all of the teacher’s courseware* could be partially alleviated by locating the sysop and teachers near an existing conventional gurukula.
20. All enrollment fees and tuition would be sent to the sysop.
21. A one time enrollment fee of US$100 would be charged for each student. (100% of this would go to the sysop.)
22. Each course would require a monthly tuition charge of between US$9 and US$16, depending upon the grade level. (10% of this would go to the sysop, 90% to the teacher.) (Kindergarten: US$9/month/course; 1st and 2nd grades: US$10/month/course; 3rd and 4th grades: US$11/month/course; 5th and 6th grades: US$12/month/course; 5th and 6th grades: US$13/month/course; 7th and 8th grades: US$14/month/course; 9th and 10th grades: US$15/month/course; 11th and 12th grades: US$16/month/course)
[Comment: For a teacher teaching four 1st grade classes of 30 students each, this would come out to US$10 x .9 (90%) x 4 x 30 = US$1080/month. If there were 30 students at every grade level each taking 4 courses at a time, this would work out to US$1908/month for the sysop (not including enrollment fees & profits from course material sales).]
23. The sysop would be responsible for purchasing all course materials, and getting them into the hands of the teachers and students.
24. Students would be required to pay the sysop for all of the course materials which he sends them. At the end of the year, the sysop should be willing to buy course materials back at a reduced price (25% to 50% of the price for new, depending upon the condition), provided that there is a good chance for them to be resold.
* Courseware could include textbooks, computer software, cassette tapes, manipulatives, visual aids, etc.
| Home | THIS WEB PAGE URL: http://pratyatosa.com/?P=h |