International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
non-teaching staff on its rolls, it has 12 faculties, comprising a wide spectrum of academic disciplines (95
departments, 5 institution and 13 centers) and 18 ‘Halls’ (residential areas protected by walls and gates)
encompassing 73 hostels. The University offers 325 courses in the traditional and modern branches of education.
We are using a number of teaching aids in AMU for about a decade and their use has turned the quality of
teaching up to a remarkable degree. Teaching aids have provided an incentive among the students for discovery
and thinking. Using teaching aids in addition to the verbal and personal communications and interactions with
the students, there has arisen activity-based learning among the students. In fact, using teaching aids is a
confirmation that a teacher can be more careful about the students with the help of these learning aids. Global
education systems stress upon the education quality, which should be judged by its contribution to the
development of cognitive skills and behavioral traits, attitudes and values that are necessary for good citizenship
and effective life in the community. Over the last decade, researches have been able to demonstrate that the
quality of education has a statistically significant and positive effect on socio-economic growth. Indeed, the
number of applicants in BSc, MSc and PhD courses has increased since the time these educational aids were
used in th department as well as at those educational institutions where our educational materials was borrowed
and used. In addition, the number and quality of research publications have also increased significantly
wherever the technique of using teaching aids was applied. There was also an escalation in the number of
research projects offered by different government agencies.
The teaching aids we are using are given as following:
Display( cards.! An! educational! display! is! an! organized! visual! card4size! (A3! or! A4)! presentation! of! a!
program! or! a! concept.! Such! an! educational! display! stimulates! teachers’! thoughts! regarding! important!
facts! or! processes;! additionally,! it! may! result! in! response! action! on! the! reader’s! part.! The! educational!
display!may!be!a!poster,!a!tabletop!display,!an!A4!or!A3!size!paper!display.!Display!may!show!any!topic!of!
an!educational!nature.!The!display!may!include!electron!micrographs,!deficiency!symptoms!of!an!element!
in!plants,!shape!of!a!crystal!and!so!on.!!This!is!a!good!educational!material!that!fits!well!for!those!who!
have!limited!funds!to!spend!on!education.!!
Mnemonics. Mnemonic means something related to the memory or that which aids the process of recalling or
memorizing. Hence, a process or a series of steps in order to help a person to memorize things or facts is called
as “mnemonic”. In other words, a mnemonic is a memory aid. For example: VIBGYOR is a mnemonic to
remember 7 colors of sunlight, viz. Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red. Here are some
examples of mnemonics:
1) To remember the order of the planets – starting from closest to the farthest to the sun. “My Very Educated
Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas”; it may help memorize the seven planets as: Mercury, Venus, Earth,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
2) A mnemonic to memorize “Mineral Hardness scale (1-10)”
3) “Teachers’ Guidance Can Flourish an Outstanding Quest to Cease Discord”
4) Talc (=1), Gypsum (=2), Calcite (=3), Fluorite (=4), Apatite (=5), Orthoclase (=6), Quartz (=7)
5) Topaz (=8), Corundum (=9) and Diamond (=10).
6) Similarly, we have prepared the following mnemonic to memorize 20 essential elements for plants.
(1) To remember four levels of the atmosphere, there is mnemonic: “Tonight Snakes Make Tea”.
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