Workshop at The White Eagles School, village Devpur, Kutch, Gujarat, April 2016
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!