“Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.” – John Holt
The first monthly seminar for the year 2025, under the banner ‘Conscientia’ was conducted on the topic: ‘Smart Learning’. As the academic years of many different educational streams are to come to an end soon, our team decided that it would be best to provide our audience – which comprises mainly of students – with strategies on how they can learn effectively and efficiently. We informed our speaker of the same, and they agreed on focusing their session in this direction to support our decision.
The speaker for the session was Mr. Steven Paul Ponaganti, who has finished his MA in Literature and is currently waiting for his PhD. He has worked at two colleges as an assistant professor and has decided to speak from his experience with various students on the given topic.
He began the session with a disclaimer to the audience that they certainly will not be able to become an overnight topper or change phenomenally after this session, but would instead be able to appreciate their unique ‘intelligence’ and ‘learning style’ and channelize it in the way they are supposed to. Then, he gave a brief but realistic and proved summary on the current state of the education system, teachers and students in India, allowing the audience to fully understand what they were up against, before delving into Howard Gardner’s theory of ‘multiple intelligences’. This was followed and concluded by a thorough and deep explanation of the 9 intelligences in Gardner’s proposed theory, detailing their strengths, characteristics and potential career choices as well as strategies on how to make use of these intelligences to learn effectively.
The audience highly appreciated the session, providing the following feedback with regards to how they felt about the experience and teaching they gained from this session:
“It’s wonderful session… Some people really they don’t know what intelligence they have… From this session we can get some clarity on what intelligence actually we have….. Thanks to the SON team..”.