Some marathons are interesting. They test your stamina, your spirit of achievement and the intensity of that spirit! Quite uniquely, there’s also this important element of teamwork in action. Add to it the excitement, the anxiety, the pressure caused by the 60 seconds timer in front of you, all adding up towards the total 48 hours given duration! And despite the burnout it may cause, you come out with an enriching experience, increased enthusiasm about the subject! All this and much more is roughly what the World Maths Day was about. In countries like the UK, Australia, New Zealand and many others, the event was inaugurated by the Prime Ministers of those countries!
Atmiya Vidya Mandir students participated for the first time along with some 56,000 schools and 11,30,000 students worldwide. World Maths Day 2010 was an international online Maths competition in which each participating student had to complete 500 Maths games, each of 60 seconds duration within a 48 hours window. This was clearly an outcome of AVM teachers’ constant endeavour of looking out for such national or international level competitions for students that would encourage them in their academics. World Maths Day 2010 was a truly unique world event and a fantastic way to promote numeracy within our school. Past results of World Maths Day competition show that students make significant improvements in their mental arithmetic skills and have fun in the process!
In this year’s World Maths Day 2010 competition, our dearest students performed an amazing feat. Following are details of our school in the World Maths Day 2010 Hall of Fame (Age group: 9-13):
Class results:
Class 8 Team secured 11th position worldwide and 1st in India.
Class 5 Team secured 42nd position worldwide and 4th in India.
Class 6 Team secured 50th position worldwide and 5th in India.
Individual results:
Suraj Patel (Class 8) secured 59th position in the world and 5th in India in the age group 9-13.
Through this event, we witnessed the basic philosophy of Atmiya Vidya Mandir in action. The students of different standards working in the same computer labs were seen many a times encouraging each other regardless of whatever their personal score was. Even remarkable was the event that the students who did not participate in the event, continuously kept sending their messages in pieces of papers motivating their friends to give it their best shot.
As a school, we also learnt that nothing is impossible if the enthusiasm of students is guided in the right direction.
Students experienced the unique power of brain that God has gifted us. We saw them applying a lot of skills that are important in real life like – teamwork, time management, pride for colleague’s achievements, confidence, working under pressure, Maths skills and many more. They realised that the whole world is like a classroom and they will have to compete with other students around the world in the future.
Classroom is a physically restricted learning area in a way, but such an online competition provides a much bigger platform to play and perform and simultaneously the students become aware of where they stand in terms of their skills at a global level and hence can set their personal targets of learning.
Rigorous 48 hours session on basic operations of Maths – helped develop critical thinking and problem solving abilities, something that is reportedly lacking in the younger generation employees. The test seemed to be designed keeping in mind child psychology facts and hence has proved to be more effective in bringing up their enthusiasm.
Above all, we saw their unshakable faith in God in any circumstances.
There are so many factors that made this event possible here at Atmiya Vidya Mandir –
- Our dear Principal Shri Yogeshbhai Raval who is always in favour of providing real life learning opportunities to the students that would prepare them for the realities of tomorrow.
- Our students’ enthusiasm to learn which was pushed further up by the practice sessions held by the World Maths Day team in which our classes secured the Top 5 ranks in the world and majority of our students secured within in the top 10 positions in their respective age groups.
- The whole hearted support of the staff.
- School’s technology infrastructure with very high speed dedicated Internet connection
Above all, the blessings of our founder, His Divine Holiness Hariprasad Swamiji Maharaj whose vision is to provide unique education to each child. With this grand vision, he has also blessed the school with very enthusiastic and dedicated teachers.
Quite eagerly looking forward to the World Education Games 2011…
Till then, the students with even more enthusiasm to learn continue to sharpen their saw.
