KOLKATA: Though teaching kids through multimedia teaching is the order of the day, schools are still not being able to implement it properly and capture the attention of the entire class.

The age old ratio of 5% of the class being brilliant, the next 20% being above average, the next 40% being average and the remaining below average has not been bettered despite the fact that several human intelligence surveys proving have shown that only the bottom 5% of any given classroom is beyond help. The remaining can all be made to perform above par with the help of multimedia teaching.

There are several schools in the city that have already started using multimedia tools for teaching. But little is done other than beyond making the class go through audio visual topics on smart boards, there is little else that is happening at the moment . Instead of reading out from the text book, the teacher just lets her students go through the topic on the screen. In most cases, the topics are designed by software professionals abroad and do not take the Indian context into consideration.

Naturally, it catches the attention of the top students, while the remaining just get bored. Most of what is discussed, does generate interest among the top students as is natural, but fails to catch the attention of the remaining students, who are just as bored.

In order to break away from this mould, Microsoft - the world's leading software solutions provider - has come forward to help schools improve the quality of teaching-learning as part of its corporate social responsibility.

It has designed several subject-wise teaching tools suited to the English medium syllabi taught in the national school boards - the CBSE and the ICSE or ISC.

Also, this bouquet of software is completely free and can be downloaded from the web by schools for use in the classrooms. On Saturday, Microsoft India has invited principals of the top ICSE and CBSE schools for a workshop at La Martiniere for Girls to generate awareness about these tools and how they can be used in the classrooms.

"What is different about these multimedia lessons is that they are also interactive. For instance, a teacher just cannot play a chapter on the 1757 Battle of Plassey and sit quietly. The tool will work only when she fills in the gap through her lectures and every lesson is planned in that way. Interestingly, self training kits are also provided for teachers of respective subjects that are absolutely necessary if the tools are to be used," explained Richa Bhatia, the training co-ordinator of the project.

Among the school principals who will participate in the workshop are, Loren Mirza of La Martiniere for Girls, TH Ireland of St James School, Rita Chatterjee of Apeejay Hogh School,Sharmila Bose of Birla High School for Girls, Usha Mehta of BD Memorial Girls High School,Mukta Nain of Birla High School for Boys and Malini Bhagat of Mahadevi Birla Girls HS School.

"Most principals who are participating are extremely senior and have been in the profession for years. In all these years, a lot of change has taken place in come into the field of education, especially when it comes to IT-related educational tools. Principals need to be oriented towards this so that they can implement the right tools that will help to improve the standard of the students," said Loren Mirza, principal of La Martiniere for Girls.

"There is no credit in the top 10% of the class scoring beyond 90%. If 80% of the class scores above 80%, therein lies the credit of the teacher. That is possible only through proper use of the multimedia because chalk and talk is essentially boring and cannot attract the average student," said Mukta Nain.