Methodology
This involves gathering material and organising it in the form of a project.
To make this clearer, let us take the example of one theme, 'How cities grew'.
# Break the larger theme into several sub-themes, like recording the images of your city, some familiar, some not so familiar; tracing the reasons for the growth of the city; comparing remnants of older parts of the city with newer parts and the changes that the city has undergone.
# Build a series of activities to explore these sub-themes. Organise walks/drives around the city. Make jottings on the basis of what you see and what you find out from conversations with people from different walks of life. Take photographs, make sketches, record interviews.
To balance what you have experienced, dig out interesting research material about the city and its people in the past. It could be in the form of a historical essay, interesting travellers' accounts, or even a story or poem. A further hint would be not to stop just with the familiar, but to go beyond the obvious and notice the quieter but equally important processes that go on in the city on a daily basis.
While selecting and extending a theme, the teams must keep a few things in mind:
# They should not narrowly interpret the theme, nor should they merely string together diverse facts. The ability of a team to connect their individual impressions with the broader picture will add value to the overall project.
# The projects will come alive if they have a feel of real places, people, sights and sounds and activities. The project has to be an amalgam of real on ground experience of the student and valuable supplementary information.
# An ability to think laterally in several dimensions will add lustre to the exploration of a theme.
# The ability of a team to draw one's own conclusion on the basis of observation, experience and assessment, is what will lend a creative touch to the projects.
|