Ritu Sinha Knowledge Centre for Creative Learning

This centre has been sponsored by:

Ritu Sinha Charitable Foundation,

C/O The Corporation,

30 Radcliff Road,

Staten Island, New York 10305 (USA) 

in fond remembrance of:

Ritu Sinha J. D.

(1966-2000)

BA 1988 Columbia University

Attorney at Law, Boston University 1992

Creative Learning is basically a learning system aimed at promoting creativity in society. APCL has been established with a view to promote Creativity and Creative learning in society. This requires collection, storage, processing and dissemination of information pertaining to creative skills of different communities and also of different age-groups. To achieve this purpose Ritu Sinha Knowledge Centre For Creative Learning (RSKCCL) has been established at School of Creative Learning (SCL), Patna (India).

It would specially focus on the issues related to poor and underprivileged. It would also have special section on issues related to children not getting desired results in schools and also of gifted children.

Objectives of RSKCCL

• To maintain and develop knowledge repositories e.g. the organisation's intranet, key information databases and collections
• To provide content management services such as cataloguing, indexing and developing taxonomies for electronic knowledge repositories
• To co-ordinate the capturing of knowledge from projects and assignments and incorporating it into knowledge bases such as databases of best practices and or case studies
• To identify and form skills links with sources of important knowledge, both inside and outside the organisation
• To provide pointers to people as well as information- connecting people who need help with people who can provide it, identifying subject experts, maintaining a skill data base, connecting people who share similar needs or are working on similar problems, etc.
• To provide 'onestop shop' for multiple knowledge and information needs
• Provide pointers to resources and/or training in information and knowledge skills

Activities and Services

• Loan Service: Books from General, Fiction, Biography and Hindi Sections can be checked  out. Books would normally be issued for a week.

• Text Book Bank: Text Books would be maintained in a Book bank which could be checked out for a session to poor boys and girls.

• Reference Service: Books in other Sections in the Library would be for reference work and would not normally issued. The Librarian will assist to find the books on demand. S/he can also be contacted for other sources like journal articles, websites etc. and for guidance in research methods.

• Catalogue: The Library catalogue can be searched from any computer terminal in the Library. It would also display the new arrivals.

• Computers: The Library would provide access to electronic resources in chiefly two ways. First, it would maintain a collection of multimedia CD ROMs, DVDs, etc.. Secondly, it would  provide access to Internet for research and study.

• Map Section: Library would  maintain a map section having collection of various types of maps.

• Case Studies Section: Library would  maintain a case study section having collection of various types of cases and best practices. 

• Scanning and Printing: These services would be available for genuine research purposes.

• Reprography: Materials to be photocopied would be marked and given to the person in charge for duplication.

• Workshops: Library would organise workshops and training programmes for development of skills of silent/speed reading, creative writing, calligraphy, group discussion, book analysis and review, etc.

• Magazine: Library would also display and publish a periodical magazine to be run and managed by children.  

• Exhibitions: Library would exhibit teaching learning materials being used by different schools and organisations.

• For completing projects and assignments

• Acquisition of further knowledge about a topic taught in the class

• Finding information about a hobby or past time

• Being aware of current events and news 

• Reading for pleasure

• Browsing through the shelves/computers looking for ‘something interesting

• For preparing class notes by teachers

• For guiding learners to explore the knowledge in persuance of their curiosity  

• For research purposes related to design of new books and teaching learning materials for children

• For spending time in the world of books
• For sharing their immense experience with the children

• The centre would have Web based Computer Centre.  The centre will have facilities to run a webserver software hosting the pages where in the user at the clientside can run through an index of books sorted according to subjects and can access the book entirely or only parts of its contents based on topic/chapter.

• A data warehousing software will run in the background and will hold the books and textual materials in a digitized format. The server side also would be capable of automatically generating index of items added to the Digital repository. Text based Digital documents could be made full text searchable through a suitable interface. When contents from CD are added to the centre the server also need to act as CD cache. There is a need to have an intranet running for the local network and a firewall to prevent any intrusions and security threat.

• Computer Centre would also run programmes/courses in the field of Computer Education.

• The centre would also have facilities for organising conferences for creation of materials for promotion of creative learning and their dissemination. It would also have proper facilities for presentation and display of materials.  It would also be used for organising various group discussions and competitions.

• RSKCCL will also run a Health centre which would mainly perform following activities

  • Regular health check up of  the learners of School of Creative Learning

  • Maintenance of Health Report card of learners

  • First aid support

  • Free health check up camps for people in ad around the campus of SCL