After conducting workshops in rural schools in the Himalayas, I reached The White Eagles School in Devpur village, 50 k.m. from Bhuj in the Kutch region of Gujarat. Conducting workshops with me I had Mehul, a 12th grader from Delhi and my son, Manan, who is studying in the 9th grade. We interacted with students from grades 5 to 12 and also with the teachers. The topic of our workshops was Tinkering with Electronics and Robotics, with life skills like creativity, collaboration and critical thinking embedded in the hands-on activities. I also conducted workshops on the same theme for the teachers.
 |
Students learnt about electricity, conductors, insulators, circuits…
and used this knowledge to make electronic art, craft and robots! |
 |
| Manan worked with students from classes 6 to 8 and build sensor-based robots that do not require a micro-controller |
|
| Mehul worked with students from classes 9 to 12 and they built Arduino-based robots |
|
| Class 5 students making a simple ScribblerBot |
|
| Senior students built more complex robots |
|
Mehul had curated videos to explain future trends like sensors, robotics, Internet of Things
and the whole gamut of what is being called the Fourth Industrial Revolution |
|
Manan and Mehul also conducted workshops to introduce Scratch,
MIT Media Lab’s free tool to teach coding |
|
| A Scratch workshop in progress |
|
| I also conducted workshops on Tinkering with Electronics for teachers |
|
| Teachers also learnt how to make electronic greeting cards and toothbrush bots |
|
| Hard at work! |
|
| Ah, the LEDs light up! |
|
| And those are some really creative ToothBrush Bots! |
