Can technology engage learners? YES, we are experiencing it through FLINNT.

Asia English School is one of the most prominent English Medium school of Ahmedabad city, pioneer in school and higher education. Established in 1965, Asia School has strength of more than 3000 students and 250 teaching staff. We also cater to a range of socio-economic classes, as a school we are committed to the job of ensuring that learners are not turned away because of their financial inability, through the medium of scholarships we ensure that deserving learners can complete their schooling.

The objective of giving this background is to bring out the fact that technology integration in a school like ours is often considered a very difficult thing, some of the oft repeated problems are:

• Large classrooms.
• Inability of learners to buy expensive IT devices.
• Inability of educators to learn and use technology.

The progressive and consistent policy of the school has been to experiment with a number of different software, hardware and content distribution system. I should confess that every platform/school has failed to achieve the technology integration in the process of learning. The use of technology had been a mammoth task as most of the education software available in market is very complex and confusing.

Frankly speaking, attending the flinnt presentation by a group of educators from Ahmedabad was one of the normal activities for me like many such educational platforms that have mushroomed in current time. A 10 minute presentation of flinnt changed my perception of educational technology. I was well convinced the two specification of the platform “the easiest and most dynamic Edutech tool” for learning institutions.

I could not resist the implementation and easiest job was convincing my management as the annual cost was only Rs. 15,000/- but all my experiments with technology had made my teachers wary about my intentions. Their initial apprehension turned into enthusiastic welcome in a very short period of time because Flinnt is a mobile first platform.

I realized that the resistance from the educators was only because it was difficult for them to post resources and notifications from a PC, as soon as they could do it from their mobile phones and at their own convenience they adopted it willingly.

What we have achieved today is:

• Each grade and subject has a closed private group.
• Educators post learning resources prior to, during and after the unit have been transacted in the classroom.
• Educators are free to choose the kind of resources they want to post, Math teachers post a lot of quizzes, social science teachers post links to happening in the society, language teachers post movie reviews, editorials etc.

As I understand we have just scratched the surface of what we can achieve through Flinnt, but that is the way we have planned the implementation. We want all our educators to feel comfortable using Flinnt, the 1^st years objective is to use it as a communication tool through which day to day notifications and simple learning resources can be shared. Later we hope to take it to the level of collaborative learning.

Earlier, technology in education was a debatable topic amongst the society. Everyone had their own views on modernizing education and making it technology aided. There were a huge number of positives and negatives to education technology. But, gradually as technology was embraced by the educational institutes, they realized the importance of technology in education. Its positives outnumbered the negatives and now, with technology, education has taken a whole new meaning that it leaves us with no doubt that our educational system has been transformed owing to the ever-advancing technology. Technology and education are a great combination if used together with a right reason and vision and ‘FLINNT’ the school communication platform helping in this transformation. 

Technology is an increasingly important aspect of modern school life and has drastically changed the way teachers and students go about their daily activities. I can confidently recommend ‘FLINNT’ as it is easy as any social media and dedicated to life and learning. It provides ample opportunity for school heads to transform their respective institutions to learning centers of 21^st century.

Jayasree Menon

Vice Principal

ASIA English School,

Ahmedabad, India 

Experience with Flinnt in the past 2 months with regards to TKC.. By Abhishek Iyer

From an Idea to Execution with the help of Flinnt.

In June 2014, with Zero Learners, I started creating my own course in the name of TKC (Thought And Knowledge Catalogue) on Flinnt Platform. In just two months, I have got around 89 plus people and still counting.

Background on how Course was created and people got interested to Subscribe

Getting on to Social Media was a daily affair. Sharing, Uploading, Chatting, Liking, Commenting became a habit. Soon after 4-5 months, Social Media gradually turned out to be a Bore and reaching out to a focused group who want to keep themselves updated with latest updates happening in various parts of the country in various fields  like Sports, economy etc.

I had my own thought of doing something creative in reaching out to the people rather than following traditional path of just creating a social media page. My main motto was to get fame and that people should get associated with me cause of my passion of getting the latest updates and information related with Flinnt, when I will reach my 20s. I was highly inspired by Mr. Mark Zuckerberg who started his career in Social Media at the age of 8.“I had no idea of how to reach to people, communicate with them and invite them. “Then came the first idea of “Thought and Knowledge Catalogue”.As the name suggests, providing good thoughts, daily news updates and more.

“I knew, it was a tough job and had many questions bothering me.”

·         How should i  reach out to a Focused Group of People

·         How to assimilate them at once place and share and connect with them.

·         Will I get to reach People? And many more.

With no help and Information, I finally published this page from my Facebook account in January, 2014.Studies being around me, I had no option to give it the First Priority.

I slowed down posting on “Thought and Knowledge Catalogue”. Soon after my SSC got completed in March, 2014 I started focusing on it. I then invited my Facebook friends to Like it and Invite their friends. I pursued my passion of posting and started getting a flow of Likes. In Three-Month “Thought & Knowledge Catalogue” has received more than 150 Likes, with no Promotion, Advertisement.

Still reaching out to a focused group was always a concern for me with whom I can connect, share and discuss over latest issues and updates in sports, economy, auto industry etc.

In June, 2014 I came to know about “FLINNT” through some of my friends. I started exploring it and found that, one can run their own course, get learners. I can keep both Public as well as private courses to choose between my focused group and public group.

Hence the idea of how to reach out to a focused group got answered through flinnt and my motto of making my course popular among the masses was also resolved by keeping one course public. FLINNT is the most convenient and simple platform to connect with people and this i can say cause of my over experience and feedback from the people who are connected with me through TKC. Creating course and inviting learners to this platform was truly cake walk for me and I never felt a need to get trained for how to use Flinnt to achieve my dream of reaching out to people and sharing my expertise. The convenience of sharing and uploading through app itself has made my work much easier. Hence even if I am travelling, studying, freaking out with my friends etc i can still remain connected with my focused group and can share & discuss the latest updates and events happening around the Globe.  Most impressive part for my on Flinnt was the retrieval option in which I can recollect the entire updates of the past just by choosing the tag, I would have kept while creating my learning posts.

TKC currently has more than 85 Learners in its Public Course at Flinnt Platform.

Thank You FLINNT for this…

Now I am successful in reaching out to people around the globe from my home and connecting with them directly over the common interest areas. Social Media is now, never a bore for me with Flinnt.

Happy Flinnting!!

- Abhishek Iyer

(Based on real-life experience)

Flinnt - Connects Learning & Life

Learning has to be Self Directed, Continuous & Contextual

Checkout this Live Examples, of the way, How conveniently an Instructor or an Educator can connect with Learners,sitting at home in the morning with Family.  

http://www.flinnt.com/post/view/?p=OTkwNzcxNzMxMDM5Mw==

Or

For that matter, even while you are shopping on Sunday with Family, how  can you be connected with your learners.

http://www.flinnt.com/post/view/?p=MzczNTMyNzMxMTA5Mw==

The only way to achieve this is to ensure that all that we see, listen, observe in life is converted into an inquiry to ensure that each happening leads to some learning. 

Learning in life is achieved in an unstructured and informal manner and it happens over a period of time, the understanding of each concept evolves and develops over a long period of time. Deep learning can happen only when academic or skills based learning programmes also mimic this sequence.


Interest, motivation and desire to learn are linked closely with how the learning content is related to the life of the learner.

"Unless the learner sees an explicit connection between the learning content and the learners own life, the learner is not going to become a self directed learner"

Ensuring that the learner is able to see learning relationships is a step towards enabling the learner to become independent.

                                              Flinnt Connecting Life & Learning 

Credit - www.wise-qatar.org

"Mobile learning is one such major revolution that demands a shift in the mere thinking of ‘learning’. It requires us to unlearn and relearn the traditional notions of Learners’ attention span (Short), Learning style/preference (Ubiquitous), New (additional) dimensions to learning (Context)”

Credit : http://elearningindustry.com/

Connecting English language to real life

As an organization we have been working with the Society for Creation of Opportunities through Proficiency in English (SCOPE) right from its inception in 2007. The challenge has been to reach all the learners scattered in different locations of the State of Gujarat and enabling them to learn English Language in a non intrusive and very cost effective manner.

At a personal level I believe that learning a language is all about relating its usage to a person's own cultural context. When I saw Flinnt, I intuitively felt that this was a platform that lent itself to use in our context, especially as it was in line with our philosophy.

I am using Flinnt to cater to the learners at the Common European Framework of Language (CEFR) level A1 and A2. These are the beginners level and the learners in many cases have just started their English language learning journey.

I have the 'Can Do' statements and the 'Grammar lists' that list out the units, the relevant vocabulary and grammar topics that are relevant to the A1 and A2 level learners.

Let me walk you through a specific example:

Topic: Giving Instructions

When I was in the flight travelling to another city, I came across the safety instruction booklet, where instructions were given using pictorial representation. I immediately shared it with my learners and got a great response. Many of them had traveled by flight and they could relate to what I was saying, also safety tips are very basic and it is easy to relate even for persons who have not been on a flight.

Also as I was listening to the safety announcements I saw an opportunity for a listening exercise. I recorded the announcement of the air hostess while she was giving safety instructions and shared it with my learners. I asked a few multiple choice questions regarding what was being said in the announcements.

All this coupled with the fact that I had already shared that I was going to travel and now I was also connecting my learners to my travelling, they became a part of my travel. They started looking forward to what I would be sharing with them.

The crux of the above both the activities are:

• We are always connected to your learners unlike a 40 min face to face session. The feeling that the educator has made the learners a part of their life and that the educator is thinking about the learners even when they are away is something that bridges the distance between the educator and the learner. When I came back my learners were a little closer to me as they felt that I had let them into a special corner of my life. This engagement with me at a personal level also established English Language as their own personal favorite. I began to understand why celebrities share about their lives and their activities.

• We can truly work on our philosophy connecting life and learning, through these activities I was able to establish that what they were learning have a real life application. When I came back I relived the moments with them asked them what would happen in you were in a flight and you were not able to comprehend what was being said, how would they feel if they were given an information booklet that they couldn't read. Through this activity not only did I give them authentic real life learning materials but I also established that what was being learnt was extremely important in life.

Further in this unit I posted some notes, a couple of videos from YouTube and also a few more questions in the form of a quiz. Thus the whole unit was revisited from a perspective that was very different from the 'role play' and presentation that I had conducted in the classroom.

So to sum up Flinnt permits me to:

• Weave authentic real life incidents into the learning programme.
• Enables me to engage with my learners after class.
• Allows me to conduct short assessments that are useful to me as an educator and my learners as a self assessment tool.
• Learners can listen to audio recordings and learning videos at their own time and pace.
• Weave additional resources from the internet.

Flinnt has added a lot of value to me and my learners I hope you also benefit from it.

Setting up a Continous Professional Development team

Photo Credit : Torbus

How many times does it happen that you come across an incident that forces you to reflect and make you dig deeper to get a better understanding of underlying theories so that you can improve on your teaching practice. These incidents are happening all the time but not everybody is equipped to spot these opportunities and not everybody can reflect on it.

Reflection in a professional setting is:

• deliberate;
• purposeful;
• structured;
• about linking theory and practice;
• to do with learning;
• about change and development.

So this is not about deep contemplation about abstract theories of life and pondering on the mysteries of life. This is structured inquiry that leads to development in an immediate future. Flinnt has the potential to be used as a Continuous Professional Development tool within any educational institution.

Step 1 : Setup the group
Decide on the members of the group and the roles that they will play.

• In case there are many inexperienced educators then it makes sense to nominate a few of the senior educators as the group coordinators with the responsibility of spotting, sharing and sequencing the flinnts.
• In case it is a small group of equally experienced educators then it makes sense to put all the peers at the same level and let all of them post the flinnts.
• All it requires is that too many incidents being posted without due deliberation and inquiry is not desirable, hence having clear role definitions and rules is imperative for a successful professional development group.

Step 2 : Identify learning opportunities from real practice
It is important that this group does not become a place for big educational theories to be floated around, the group will begin to believe that this group is like the teacher education courses with a lot of focus on theory and scant regard to practice.
Hence real incidents like:

• Some examples of classroom behaviour;
• Parental feedback and expectations;
• Planned lesson activities;
• Assessment samples.

Should be identified and relevant materials related to the incident should be collected. Important and significant incidents should be chosen that are relevant to all the group members. The vision, mission and values of the educational institution can be used to choose the right incidents, the incidents which can further the vision, mission and values should be prioritized.

Step 3 : Structure, sequence and collaborate

The versatility of the Flinnt platform in terms of its ability to tag each of the post, the chronological sequence and the ability to share various kinds of media like links to various websites, links to youtube videos, sharing of documents, audio recordings and images make it the ideal choice to sequence a series of flinnts. Based on each of the issue a deliberate, purposeful and structured sequence of flinnts should be posted bringing out the issue and further linking theory and practice.

Try to limit yourself to 1-2 flinnts everyday as it might not be possible for all the educators to read, comprehend and contribute to the discussion if it is going along at a break neck speed. Always remember that in case of professional development, quality always takes precedent over quantity. One topic that has been fully exploited for its learning potential is better than 10 topics that are discussed in a superfluous manner.

Step 4 : Summarize and conclude
It is important that once all the flinnts related to the incident have been posted and a discussion has been initiated, one or two flinnts with a summary of what has been discussed and what has been the learning should be posted. It is important that the message be reinforced, all the group members might not be at the same level of professional development and some of them might take a little longer to comprehend what is being said. You need to scaffold the team members in exactly the same manner that you expect them to work with their learners.

MOST IMPORTANT:
Get started! It all sounds very good but all you need to do is take the first step and get started, I am sure once you start, rest of the things will fall in place.
Happy Flinnting.

Flinnt & The Era of Mobile & Social Learning

Flinnt is a social utility tool for the Educators or Instructors to communicate & engage with their learners through mobile or through any other electronic devices available with them in anytime, anywhere model.

The essence of this platform for the user is to connect real life happenings, events, interesting incidences, learning resources with academic subjects. All this can be done through Mobile phone itself & learners can access it through any of the electronic device they have.

This feature of instant sharing via Flinnt, makes the life of educators or instructors peaceful & convenient.


Checkout ,why Indian Learning Institutions are moving away from static, installed based technology to cloud based and mobile based learning. 

This is 2012 TCS Survey of Digital Habits of Indian Students. This shows how, Mobile phone is aggressively getting accepted by the students in metro as well as Mini Metros.






Mind Blowing figures which shows reason for which internet is getting used by the children today. The end use of internet covers, learning as the most important reason for accessing the email ID.

In developed countries, mobile learning is actively getting used as a tool of communication & engaging the learners. Not only developed countries, but figures above clearly shows that Mobile learning is the Future of learning. Hence Flinnt as a platform is the culmination of both online as well as blended learning which suits the requirement of Indian as well as international learning institutions.

The Flinnt doodle

The first Flinnt doodle symbolizes what Flinnt stands for; life and learning are enmeshed and inseparable. A small child at home, two students in an undergraduate class, a child studying at home, colleagues discussing at a work place or a person waiting for a bus, they can all be learning using Flinnt.

The doodle also brings to life the use of various tools like video blogs, quizzes, notifications, likes, shares etc on the Flinnt platform. The role of the person sending the Flinnts in the form of announcements is also shown.

The doodle stands for the informal yet structured flow of information with Flinnt. Mobile, PC based or tablet based access to knowledge and information that can be understood through collaboration and interaction in an easy, controlled and structured manner, curated by an expert is what Flinnt is all about.