International webinar on Digital divide

 

~ Poovizhi.P

I’ve got an opportunity to speak in an international webinar organized by Dr. Monica Sharma on the topic digital divide. Below is the link to a 6 min video of the speech. It was a great experience to be part an international webinar. I learnt that where ever I may be and whatever work I do, I am connected with each one of us in the world in breaking the unhealthy isms from being in my inner capacity.

Here is what I shared.

In my experience one digital divide is employment. People who have completed Engineering in and around my village have hard time finding engineering jobs. Some of my engineering classmates, specifically girls have got married, others work in non-engineering jobs like receptionist, data entry and teaching.

This is partly because of lack of practical skills. Even in college where I was doing a degree in computer science we had limited access to few shared computers. It was enough to read text books and pass exams. Most of us didn’t have access to laptops and internet at home to explore further. After 4 years I had a degree but not much programming skills.

At STEM land I learned programming first with a visual programming language from children and then professional programming languages. When I was learning programming from children, no one made fun of me. In time I realized that a supportive environment for learning had been built at STEM land not only by the facilitators, but also the children who also practice the RTL tools. I see such a culture of supporting risk takers shifting mediocracy to excellence.

STEM lands are located in rural schools. Even with poor internet children are able to share the projects and programs they make with other children through a local area network. Through this I see the shift from being stuck without resources to having the courage to create alternatives.

There is digital divide in rural area due to the socio- economic background and very few people have access to computers, laptops and tabs. Many people have access to smart phones but internet is an issue. They have limited internet because the tower is not close or may not be able to afford internet. In the pandemic this got worse because people are earning less. To reach children in this time we send practice assignments and give feedback through Whatsapp. For those who don’t have access to internet I create physical worksheets that parents pick up or met children individually at home.

I can see that genderism is strengthened by society in technology. After certain age girls have a lot of constraints in my society. For example, boys have the freedom to come to STEM land in the evenings after school whereas girls do not. One issue is safety due to alcoholism, gangs and harassments in the evening, but much of it is social pressure. In response sleepovers where both boys and girls stay over at the school once a week has become a norm at least in one of our schools.

I wanted children from other villages and schools to also benefit from STEM land in the evenings. I faced the same constraints and fear of traveling, but I don’t want to leave it just because I am born as girl. I go to such a center and support children and take precautions that I can.

In my village alcoholism is a major issue and many children and women suffer as the men beat their wife and children and they don’t have a quiet space at home to study. The youth planned a play to bring awareness about alcoholism but none of girls participated because it is not considered socially ok. I had a fear of judgment but I noticed it and being in my values I took part. This action inspired four other girls and a married women. This has started many new conversations about alcoholism.

As a team in STEM land we look to break these isms in technology. When I joined STEM land three years ago there was only one female engineer. The women to men ratio was 1:6 and now in the technical team its getting closer to an equal ratio.

To break the digital divide

1. I need to develop an environment for youth and children to develop skills

2. I need to be more than an engineer to break genderism, groupism, alcoholism, ageism

3. I need to work from responsibility, equality and courage to create.

Choice Architecture: Nudging students to make better choices

~Aravindh & Sunil

Choice architecture is a method to extend multiple choices to individuals and giving them liberty in choosing an option coherently. In Choice architecture, consumer behaviour is taken into consideration while designing the alternatives and represented in a way that individuals select the option that is more aligned to  the provider. In schools, choice architecture is an excellent way to improve students’ physical and mental well being. Healthy habits can be nurtured in children using Choice architecture.

In one of the outreach schools in Auroville,  around 4 in 10 students were anaemic. Students eschewed nutritious snack and preferred tasty snack. In this case, children are often under a familiarity bias. A familiarity bias is when one decides to stay within their comfort zone. In this case, children portray absurdity heuristics; they tend to put away the nutritious food. They didn’t want to consume healthy food separately. To overcome this, the facilitators came up with a brilliant idea to blend drumstick leaves, dates, and peanuts (which are rich in iron) with porridge to keep the taste balanced with nutrition. After that, students preferred this snack and started to consume without any excuses. This nutritious mix meal resulted in a significant improvement in their health. 

The core driver behind this action is that the mere thought of eating food reminds us of how we feel when we eat it. Digestion starts with sight and smell. Instead of giving nutritious food separately, we can blend both nutritional and non-nutritional elements in the lunch meal. Children usually default to choices which are suitable to their taste and tend to take smaller portions that are easy for them to digest. By disguising nutritious food as per their preferred taste and size, we can nudge them to have a healthy meal.

Math Learning from Sundaram Sir

~Saranya

We have learnt the following topics and few techniques, puzzle(ken-ken) also learnt new information like Kaprekar constant, Collatz conjecture in excel. September 11(world trade centre hijacked)  etc…

S.No Topic Link
1 Place value (i) part 1: https://youtu.be/wXG1F5nyLyY

(ii) part 2:  https://youtu.be/ySa-8k5UnZc

(ii) part 3: https://youtu.be/t_tN0s4gnhI

2 Place Value real life examples https://youtu.be/HEgijGQABEw

 

3 Addition stories https://youtu.be/B0i-AFqh3l4

 

4 Word problem(Add-2 types, Sub-4 types) https://youtu.be/jV5-Pa2C73E
5 Word problem(Add-2 types, Sub-4 types, and division -2types) https://youtu.be/gOszHLHMgKI
6  Equal sharing along with multiplication https://youtu.be/kERMsSkW6pE
7 Ratio https://youtu.be/h5SV_uPpCrA
8 Difference between history and concepts

 

Geometry

 

Ken-ken(sudoku)

(i) part 1: https://youtu.be/qJS0R_xBDvU

(ii) part 2: https://youtu.be/f4HbQM3qma8

(ii) part 3:  https://youtu.be/tCuZMkZ9yds

9 Geometry(triangles(scalene), parallelogram, rhombus) https://youtu.be/k7dOko_vZEk
10 Word problem https://youtu.be/QMBqxF1BHaE
11 The surface area along with examples

Fraction

https://youtu.be/-F-8pN4MAyM
12 Fraction Addition and subtraction

Comparison of fraction

Stories for fraction

https://youtu.be/nTrfFKgWkYU
13 Fraction rule

Fraction stories

 

https://youtu.be/7_BKXGwHijg
14 Angles, angular distance, linear distance

Types of angles

 

https://youtu.be/mWylO7CvI-E
15 Sets square – draw angles using sets square https://youtu.be/aCVnOvK6YJI
16 Types of Angles chart/family tree https://youtu.be/0SxEwisQnL4

 

 

C3STREAM Land Designs delivers First IC chip

C3STREAM Land Designs delivers First IC chip:

~Ranjith, Saranya

Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining thousands of transistors into a single chip.

One year back, we started learning the VLSI layout and design process with the support of “Aura Semiconductor Pvt Ltd” (Aura is a fabless semiconductor company innovating high-performance IC products for IoT Radios, Timing, and Portable Audio markets).

Over the year we have been involved with automation using SKILL (Lisp-based Cadence programming language) and layout workflow (python, shell scripting, etc), learning layout methodology, and aspects to keep in mind in layout. An example of SKILL code was the automation of a differential pair which is a very common circuit block in analog circuit design.  This process in the last year has got us now only comfortable with the layout, but also the entire cadence flow and supported the group at Aura automate small aspects of their work.

 

We were trained in the layout by our mentor by assigning us small blocks that were used in real designs starting from digital and then analog. After completion of a layout, we got feedback from our mentor on matching, MOS transistors effects like LOD, constraints in floor planning and routing, accounting, or parasitic such as IR drops and capacitance. The time we took for each block also reduced as we worked on more blocks and we could see our progress in not only laying a block but also reduced time in making sure that it satisfied DRC (Design Rule Checker) and LVS (Layout vs schematic). This process of working on real blocks helped us improve our skill, speed, and confidence and gave us exposure to different kinds of blocks.

A couple of months back we were included in a team on an active project with Aura. We were able to complete around 40% of the layout from Auroville. It has opened opportunities for this high-tech work to be done out of Auroville. Currently, and Siva and Vasanthraj Gandhi (who are now part of the team) are being trained by us along with Aura in a similar fashion. Looking forward to layout and in time design many more IC designs.

Example of a top-level chip: