Guest talk regarding Feminist Approach To Technology

FAT:

Feminist Approach To Technology (FAT),  FAT is organizing STEM Talk series webinar from January to March 2021, “STEM और हम, स्टेम पर लड़कियों द्वारा चर्चा ”  where women will share their journey, achievements, and challenges in the STEM domain. They will discuss how they were able to break gender barriers and fulfill their dreams.

Through these monthly talks, we are aiming that more girls get inspiration from this talk and advocate STEM education for young girls and women so that they can start thinking about education/career in STEM from an early age.

On March 14th I gave a talk over zoom.

 

STEMland in rural and what are opportunities it’s gives

STEMland at a rural place will give the children, youth, and even adults an opportunity to learn about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Science and Mathematics:

There are many dropouts in a rural place where the children and youths are forced to go to work or children lose interest to learn. Children lose interest to learn as it is not interesting or not fun for the children to learn. In Stemland we make learning science and mathematics through practical means and through programs in laptops. By this, we make learning more fun and interesting to the children and youths. This also gives access to the children and youth to interact with technology programs.

For example,

We have made a practical method to show the a3-b3 using 3d printer and Alice(3d visual programming tool). The children program in Alice and show the visualization of the formula. They also have designed cubes to show the formula. By, this the children are able to understand the concept more easily.

From this, I can say that the children in rural place will have difficulties in language, but as they learn by programing, seeing and touching it makes learning more fun and therefore there is no language barrier.

This also gives the children and youth to interact with technologies. In this process they learn programming skills and designing skills. Here education will not only be theoretical but where they use their hands and minds together.

Technology:

I see most of the rural place is not equipped with latest technologies or even have access to it. I see Stemland as a societal change maker as it brings technology into rural places.

It can also be the first time for the children and youth to get access to laptops and other technologies.

How do I encourage girl children or women to stem education?

The first thing that comes into my mind when I hear this question is that I need to be encouraged in stem education first, then only I can encourage others. I truly believe that Stem education is the future. This is where there is equality in learning, where there is freedom with responsibility which is taken by the students by themselves not forced by the society, parents, or teachers.

I will share my experience with girl’s involvement in stem education. In my beginning days in STEMland, I saw girls getting actively involved in soldering the electronic equipment. I was surprised to see this. I thought that girls will basically work on laptops and do not want to get their hands dirty but here what I saw was the opposite. The girls opened an old Christmas light which was not working and fixed it. This is a true example of showing the interest of women’s child which is breaking the social and cultural norms.

 

In Stem education, we also provide sessions in leadership qualities where one discovers their potential within themselves and how to come out of fear. This helped me a lot to come out of my fear and to act from my possibilities. There is a practice or thinking in our society that girls should only do this not that and they are not fit for this job and all. Framed by society a girl is set to have boundaries and live within the boundaries. Stem education will be medium which will break the boundaries and will surely make the child work from her possibilities rather than her fear. Stem education has a wide range of opportunities, where a girl child can choose what she really wants from her heart then be forced to.

Post: https://www.facebook.com/92094187593/posts/10159165280042594/

Radical Transformational Leadership: What does this imply? Guest Speaker: Dr. Sanjeev Ranganathan

   02-05-19 Radical Transformational Leadership : What does this     imply?Guest Speaker: Dr. Sanjeev Ranganathan

Audio Link: https://www.audioacrobat.com/email/EDvYwfxsq

 

Conscious Business – Conscious Learning

Join us for a conversation with Dr. Sanjeev Ranganathan, who received his PhD in Electronics from Columbia University in New York City. He is motivated by his growth as a human being and supporting the same in others. He believes that this can be achieved by deep meaningful educational experiences for both facilitators and children in the schools, at STEM Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) centers and Aura Auro Design, a technology business he coordinates.

Sanjeev will share how he invests in developing skills, competencies and inner capacity. He finds these practical, effective and a time saver. Offering and attending courses through technology experts improves skills; applying in contexts of different projects helps improve our competency and the stewardship tools as well as meditation helps us ground ourselves and be present in what we do.

He shares how the tools and templates for radical transformational leadership have allowed the work they do with the children to be profound; and, at the same time, supportive of the growth of the team members, enabling them to be intensely engaged in the technology. Working with children gives meaning to what they do and be more responsible. Similarly, interacting with a high quality team at Aura helps us reflect on how to do our technology job well and reflects on how we facilitate or teach.

Sanjeev says that true creativity comes from a deep space of oneness and knowing that creates breakthroughs not possible from linear thinking. We always think of creativity as a mental function, but find its more the heart that yearns to make something possible and then the brain kicks in!

Seventeenth Episode: Guest in the 2nd segment : Dr. Sanjeev Ranganathan

Bio:Dr. Sanjeev Ranganathan received his PhD from Columbia University in Electronics. He is the recipient of the Lewis Winner award for best paper at ISSCC. He also volunteered for Asha for Education in various capacities and interacted with over a 100 NGOs in India working on education. He has worked at Silicon Labs, NXP, ST-Ericsson, Aura Semiconductor and has built chips used by over a billion people.Sanjeev is passionate about developing critical thinking skills with children and in helping them learn and connect with their deepest self.

Since Jun 2013 he has been working with children in Udavi School and Isai Ambalam School, both outreach schools of Auroville. In Jan 2015 he founded Aura Auro Design (AAD) along with engineering graduates in and around Auroville and in Sep 2015 with them established STEM Land (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics Land) a space of learning for children and adults. STEM land-AAD build skills, competence and inner capacity in youth to be contributing members of the community and society as a whole. He is also the executive of the Isai Ambalam school. His contact information is: sanjeev.ranganathan@gmail.com and +91 8940262969.

~sandhiya

MES10 Reflection by STEM Team

Mathematics Education and Society 10th International Conference, Hyderabad, India Jan 28th – Feb 2nd, 2019

We went for an International Conference Which happened first time in Asia. It happened in Hyderabad university. The were 160 people from 20 different countries. It was a five day conference. We went to present a paper and a poster. In this conference they a plenary session in which one people will present a p[aper and the other 2 will respond to the presenter. Then 160 were divided into 5 small groups. Each group was about 20 to 25 people. Based on the plenary session from 25 people we again split into small group and discuss about the topic that happened in the plenary session. They also gave change for each group to ask a question. Then gathered in our group and discussed the questions. Among these question we selected a question and asked it to the presenter. The presenters answered the questions. Everyday in the afternoon we had a parallel session on presenting the paper. Paper presentation

Pratap and Poovizhi presented a paper on “factors that influence children attitude towards mathematics”. To read the paper click here.

There were about 55 people for our session and we presented in front of them. Generally it was 10 minutes presentation and 20 minutes for discussion about the paper. But for us we presented for 10 minutes and discussion happened for 40 minutes the paper was well receive by the people. After presenting the paper one of the parent came to us and she wanted her child to admit in our school. That moment we felt that we are doing a big change in the world. Some of them wanted to set-up STEM in their school and they were asking many question about the STEM land school.

Poster Presentation

On the  next day Arun presented a poster on Deep learning of mathematics by building projects  and we supported him. It was also well received by the people and some wanted to  implement our method in their schools.

 

Reflections of the team

 

 

 

Heidi Interview

Heidi interviewed Sanjeev. Heidi came up with few interesting question for sanjeev. Sanjeev answered her question it was  interesting for us.

She asked about Stewardship for new emerging workshop with Monica Sharma and He talked about Leadership In Action Program(LIAP).

He shared his experiance of the stewardship tools and how it helped him to progress of who am I? What do I care for? What is my stand and social fear? etc…… He shared his experience of vipaasana meditation. He shared that what he learnt from these workshops.

 

Trigonometry Puzzle Game

I have been working on a project for the 9th graders. They had a small puzzle game where they were supposed to find trigonometric ratios and built the puzzle piece by piece by colouring it. Children liked it and as a team we decided to build it in scratch. I took up the responsibility and build a scratch program similar to the game they had in their text book. Here’s the program.

Children were excited and they started building the program themselves.

Scratch Project 9th grade

This project is on ‘Set Theory’ where Ajay shows the different formations in sets. i.e, AUB, A∩B

Following is a project where Preethika draws a van using the co ordinate system.

Below is a project on Set Theory where Yuvraj shows us different sets visually.

Following is a project on Co-ordinate systems where Kabilan showcases the different quadrants.

Simple Burglar Alarm

Prabhakaran 7th grade student from Isai-Ambalam school.He comes to Stem land on every Saturday and works on his own doing soldering and tinkering some electronics kit. He made this burglar alarm by himself with a buzzer,clip and a battery. Then he demonstarted how it works. In the mouth of the clip he placed two metal screws . Then he connected one of the screw to the battery and the other screw to the buzzer so that when both the screws are in contact it makes sound . Then he attached an icecream stick to a thread and stuck it on the side wall of the door. He then placed the icecream stick in between the metal screws of the clip and closed the door. When the door opened the icecream stick would come out from the clip and the metal screws would be in contact with each other, so the buzzer would be connected to the battery and makes the beep sound. This is a simple and a wonderful burglar alarm.