Author: Prathap Ganasan

I went to Bangalore to do an internship on “Toys from Trash”(Aravind Gupta Toys). I did the Internship at SchoolGuru(located at Malleshwaram in Bangalore). Procheta was my practioner. The timing was from 10am-5pm.I did some 21 toys by watching the videos on youtube. After I finished each toy, Procheta and I we would discuss about the toy like how it will work and what principle it is based on,were it would be used and all. After a week Procheta,Vishal(another practioner)and I conducted a small workshop for the kids in Pura Fountain (Appartment in Marathalli,near Marathalli Bridge) . There were about 12-15 kids(age- 8 to 12 years old) , we conducted the workshop for three days. Each day we did some 5 toys. The kids really enjoyed making the toys and also enjoyed playing with it.

Then I went to Azhim Premji University(Electronic city,Inside PES College Campus) on 11th and 12th with my team (Vishal,Procheta and Me) were we attended a workshop conducted by Vikas Maniar on “Learning Maths from Trash Toys”. We made Counters, 2D blocks, Arrow Cards , Money Cards , Place Value Cards and Abacus and some more materials using waste cardboard sheets, small wood piece, nuts,cycle spoke and color paper to teach children(primary section) about numbers and addition, subtraction, division and multplication. How the children can find their own way in recognising the pattern and their own way of solving the problem was the main goal of our work.

On 13th Friday we conducted a workshop at Thermo Fisher Scientific(A company which helps Researcher in their research field) for 18 students(from 7th-10th Grade) from rural school and even some of the employees attended the workshop with their children. Then in the afternoon we went to NIAS(National Institute of Advanced Science which is situated inside IISC-Indian Institute of Science Campus) where Procheta and Vishal gave a small demonstration to the kids there and after we conducted a workshop for the kids to make the toys. The kids were so excited and they were asking lot of questions.

My Reflections:

I learned many things from making the toys,how to be organized when conducting workshops and how efficiently I am able to work. First, we would discuss what toys that we will do with the children in the workshops. Once, it is finalised we would take the materials and arrange the materials and take it to the place where we would have the workshop. Then we will first distribute the materials needed for the first toy and we w it will do the toy one step at a time. First, we will do it and the children would see it and then they will do it. Once, the toy is finished we all would discuss about the toy how it works and why it works. This is where the children starts thinking and asks question. After that they go and play with the toy. I would like to see going forward by taking session on how I conducted the Workshops with my team(Aura Auro Design) and teach the childrens in school. It was a nice experience that I had in Bangalore. I would like to use the experience that I got in my work space.

I spent two full weeks at Aura Semiconductor, Bangalore as an Intern. Most of the days we were in office from 8:30am to 7pm. These two weeks for me was more about learning and noticing how people at Aura work efficiently. Though I got some work done, the trip for me personally was about my growth and learning to work more in a professional way.

I noticed that everyone there work very well as a team. There is lots of team work involved. People talk to each other a lot. They sit with each other and clear their doubts. They maintain Revision control system. People checkout and checkin from that. They all had certain long time goals and plans which they wanted to achieve. People are very helpful at Aura. They seem to acknowledge each other very well too. Not all are always glued to the computer. They also take some time off having some coffee etc..

I learnt that whenever I am stuck with something and cant proceed further I should talk to others and ask for help. I should value other people’s time. I was adding comments to my code which I wasn’t doing before. I am learning to write code in a sensible manner and not add unwanted lines. I also learnt how powerful formulas can be once they are applied in a code.

The experience for me was very different spending nearly 11-12 hours day in office. Sometimes I missed Stemland and school during the day. But the days never felt that tiring when compared to Aura Auro. Maybe because of the AC, snacks, coffee and people staying late 🙂