NIE birthday celebrations on Wednesday

KOLKATA: Over 3,000 students from 150 member schools will converge at Science City on Wednesday evening for a common cause — birthday celebrations of Newspaper-in-Education (NIE) movement undertaken by the Times of India in August 2002.
With the motto — learning through fun, learning for life — the NIE team has come a long way in establishing it''s foothold in most schools within a year of its existence in Kolkata.
A live musical concert by popstar Palash Sen of the celebrated rock band Euphoria will mark the grand occasion. Sponsored by Centurion Bank, the entry passes of the birthday bash will be distributed from the TOI office to members on a first-come-first-serve basis on Monday and Tuesday.
Apart from organising various workshops for students, teachers and parents on a variety of subjects on a regular basis, NIE also played host to the city’s first ever Children''s Film Festival twice last year.
Through interactive sessions and workshops with eminent personalities including Amartya Sen, Kiran Karnik, Bikram Ghosh, Vishwanathan Anand and Viren J. Shah, NIE has always aimed at exposing students to varied fields.
“NIE has played an important role in integrating the students with the society, especially through the print media last year. For example, an article on plastic pollution in the newspaper can be referred to in an chapter on environment and this way a student corelates to the subject better,� said principal of Apeejay School Rita Chatterjee.
Two major initiatives — Newspaper-in-action and Beyond-books-approach — aimed at integrating students to a broad-based education system, will be launched by NIE in the forthcoming year.
“The banks have come to play a significant role in education as a result of globalisation. Not only are they tying up with various educational institutes and universities for facilitating a child’s education, they are keen on developing a long term relation with such institutes,� said Centurion Bank regional Head Jayanta Gupta.
Over 20,000 student members are looking forward to the event. “The best thing about the movement is that they make the whole learning process fun for us. We are exposed to a wide variety of subjects and are free to express our views and opinions in the weekly ''champ'',� said Kapil Das, Class XI student of St. James, excited about the evening with Euphoria.