SSD session with Arulvazhi school children

~Hari,Murali,Sarath

With the visit of Arulvazhi school students me and sharat have also joined them in learning SSD (seven segment display). Initially we just learnt about SSD and its primary uses. Arun and Murali explained elaborately about SSD and they showed a demo. With that reference children tried to work with it. me and Sharat just tried my name getting displayed with the use of SSD and finally got it perfectly.

 

Interview with Prathul

A volunteer named prathul visited STEMLAND about 5 months ago.

He was supporting the English content team in improving children’s english skills. He also handled Geography classes for 8th graders at Isai Ambalam.

Who is Prathul ?

A young energetic man who once was a fashion designer living a luxurious life and then all of a sudden left this ordinary life to explore the world. He always believed that there is more to life than just making money, having high social status, and high paying career. There was a part of him that wanted the adrenaline rush, adventure and curiosity. The man who has explored  all the continents and many countries with just his backpack.

For more info visit:  https://backpackwithprat.com/

Prathul’s  message :
Some places leave an inedible mark on our lives. Auroville was and will always be that place that I would keep coming back to… It resonates my love for learning and living…
Though I’ve come to Auroville few times in the past, this time it has been the start of a new chapter in my life. I couldn’t have asked for a more gratifying, loving, resourceful and humbling 5 months. 5 months!!! The longest I have ever been in a place… And I owe it all to the wonderful people I met here, the initiatives I have been a part of, the people I worked with, the immense knowledge that I have gained, the laughs we shared…. And so much more. I hope I will come back soon to learn, contribute and grow more together.
Thank you. My heart is full and overwhelmed with all that I have received. Thank you. Thank you.

 

Unit digit of a cube number

-Logeshwari

8th graders in Udavi School were learning about the squares and cubes. This is a simple scratch project to show the unit digit of cube of a number.

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/366990201/

STEM team meet with Father of Tejas aircraft

~ Poovizhi, Arun and Murali

On December 17, we met Dr. Kota Harinarayana who is the Father of Sriman Kota who works with us in Quilt content team. Dr. Kota Harinarayana headed a determined team that tested the first flight of the Light combat aircraft(LCA). For more info click here

We started our conversation by introducing who we are, what we really care for and what we do in STEM land Aura Auro Design.

Dr. Kota Harinarayana shared about his dream of using technology to aid agriculture that reaches farmers at ease. For example using Drone for capturing images of the field for image processing  using AI to overcome the disadvantage of using satellite.

At the end of our conversation, we all felt grateful and acknowledged.

STEM land meeting with all STEM coordinators

~Murali and Poovizhi

STEM land meeting with all STEM coordinators

This  Friday (29/11/2019) we had an interesting sharing session. Abilash, Ranjith and Sivaraman presented an experiment on Electrolysis through which they generated hydrogen from water using salt and electricity. It was new for us and we learnt how oxygen and hydrogen splits from water.

 

For more info on this click here 

After this practical experiment, Sundar from Udavi Stemland presented a scratch project on a graph in which the sprite moves to a particular point and asks the user to enter the (x,y) coordinates. Once the user enters the correct coordinates, it moves to the next point and so on. If the user completes until the end it draws an image.

To have a look at this project, Click here

Following this, we had another scratch project on algebraic expression. It is a game where the user is supposed to find the value of the given objects on both sides of a weighing scale.

 

Responsive Website using HTML, CSS & JavaScript over two weekends

~ Poovizhi and Murali
We had an intense course offered at STEM land by Umang Doctor who has over 18 years of experience in software development and digital technologies.

10 people participated in the course and we learnt

– Practical experience of responsive website development primarily using JavaScript
– Understanding of next steps required to develop further skills in web development
The course included:
HTML 5, CSS 3, ES6, Bootstrap 4
JavaScript basics, Data structures using JavaScript, JavaScript modules, OOPS,Debugging using Chrome
We went through the exercises in FreeCode camp https://learn.freecodecamp.org/  and played games in https://flexboxfroggy.com/ to recall flexbox in CSS.

Summer Scratch Course

~ Murali, Sundar, Arun During the school summer holidays,a scratch course was handled by the STEM Land and Auro Aura Team for the Isaiambalam and Udavi students.It was a 5 day course from May 27 to 31 in the morning from 9.30 am to 12.30 pm.Around 18 children participated in the first day whereas from second day another 5 children from auroville attended the course. Day 1 The course begin with a Stewardship tool, the students were asked about their ‘Stand’ and ‘Fear’. They were all asked to think of a person they admire (It could be any fictional superheroes, but not a person they know related to friends and family) the most and the qualities they have. Not what they did in life. Children shared in groups. Once they sourced their Universal values they stood for, children were asked to think of the social fear they have and how to transcend them. Though they were confused at the beginning, they started understanding the tool and shared on the stage. We used a performance tracking software that we follow in our school in which children will make plan of what they are going to do in that particular day and at the end of the day, they will be assessing their plan by giving score out of 10. Also they will be making a daily reflection of what they learnt about themself, what will they be doing diiferently of what they learnt.In Scratch they were asked to make a simple game where they used the ‘Sensing’ and ‘=’ operator. Later they created the score variable and made it to increase for every right answer and decrease the score for every wrong answer or reset to 0.Then they used the repeat until function to repeat the same question until the user gives the right answer. They also used the operator block to make simple arithmetic calculation like Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division. At the end of the day students were introduced with ‘Makey Makey’. They used it as a mouse by scrolling and played sounds with it. Day 2 Day 2 begin with the ‘Deep Listening’ Tool. After the Stewardship tool they were asked to display their projects and explained it. Their task for the day was to make different shapes (circle, concentric circle, square, triangle and shapes upto ten sides, and mandala) using pen function. Finch Robot was introduced to the students. It was connected to a Laptop and was made to run with the help of Brainbird using scratch2. Day 3 The Day begin with ‘4 profiles’ tool and were given example to understand their profiles. After displaying their projects, they were asked to make a maze game where they should create their own maze and cotrol the sprite. They were shown how the interactive camera works with the help of an example code which was already made by the students. Day 4: The fourth day started with the Listening and speaking from Three domains(stewardship tool). After that project presentation of the prrevious day projects happened.Then children did their daily plan and then were asked to create score using variables for their maze game which they did in the previous day.They also created randomly moving objects and added sounds.At the end of everyday we used to show some realtime working modules that can interact with scratch.On fourth day it was Mindstorms EV3 which was built by some of the alumni of udavi school. They built a robotic vehicle and demonstrated how it moves and rotates its arms.children were very excited and few also tried playing with the robot.At the end of the day assessment and daily reflection were done. Day 5: The tool for the 5th day was Judgement and Discernment.As usual project presentation happened after the stewardship session. The task for that day was drawing shapes and calculations (addition, subraction,multiplication,division) of two numbers using function blocks. The final day wrapped up with children making their final 5 day course assessment and feedback which was followed by a circle meeting where everyone shared their thoughts about the course.

Backyard cleanup for garden

Since STEMland is moving very next to our office, We as a team  decided to cleanup the area between the two buildings(AAD office and STEMland) which was full of bushes and thorns. We want to make sure that everyone using this place is safe as this place was full of insects ,termites, scorpions, snakes, etc..,

BEFORE:

 

 

 

 

 

We cleared all those unwanted plants/grasses and stones. We have planned to build a table at the center which we could use for meetings and the children can also use this open space for studying outside if they wish. We will be covering the whole space with green shade nets and plant some plants to make it look like a beautiful garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  AFTER:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note:-This work is yet to be continued once the summer is over.

Programming4Matheducators Day-5

Day 5:

As usual we started the day with the insights from the previous day. The tool for day 5 was CFSR (Conscious Full Spectrum Response) which was handled by Arun.He explained the 3 circles of Solution,System and cultural shifts,values/Stand.The participants were asked to fill CFSR relating to their own projects.

After the morning break,Few of them presented their projects in scratch which they made at home.Then everyone made their daily plans.Then we had scratch session where Pratap handled the number line integers .The participants were asked to make their own number line integers using the blocks such as sensing, operators, variables, pen. Then Ranjith showed the vernier calliper project made in scratch and also he explained the working principle using a real vernier calliper that we use in stemland.

 

The Afternoon session started with a video “What makes us feel good about work (21 min)” which was translated in tamil by Ramkumar(participant). After the video, We started geogebra session.First we asked the participants to make an equilateral triangle using the center point,radius and intersection point of two circles.Then we asked them to find the ratio between perimeter of the circle and polygons inside the circle and note the observations in the inbuilt spreadsheet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During the evening session Naveen handled the Alice basic course.He showed some projects made by the children and then he taught the basic functions such as movements, backgrounds, looks, etc.., At the end of the day we gave them some tutorial videos to learn Alice. Finally we ended the day with the participants making their assessments for their plans and daily reflections.

STEM land team switching to e-cycles

~Murali

All the members of STEM land have switched to eco-friendly mode of transportation for their daily transport. We always cared about our physical health and environment as well, So we decided to try the KINISI electric cycles. Now we have rented 11 electric cycles and are using it effectively for about 1 month for our daily tranport. We got positive feedbacks from the entire team . Hopefully, we will be using these for longer duration.

This initiative from us is appreciated by many and is making awareness to others. We strongly recommend everyone to use e-cycles instead of motorbikes  for a good cause(to keep the surroundings pollution-free and to keep yourself physically fit).