Uncategorized – Page 24 – C3STREAM Land Designs

June 8, 2017June 8, 2017

My first class with IsaiAmbalam 2017-2018

New academic year.. New students… So, something should be new in the way I start my class too. The first thing which came to my mind was the PIPER animation video. I thought, it would be nice to begin with that video. But later I realized that the video will be more effective when I combine it with stewardship tools. Yes, I did start with stewardship tools (student version) – Stand and Fear.

This year we are planning to focus on EBDs (Education By Design). The students will face many challenges in the form of EBDs. When a person asked to do something which is totally different from what they have been doing in all their life, may tends to put them in their fear of ‘Not being good enough’, ‘Making mistakes’, ‘Ridicule’ and ‘Judgement’ ( These all are the things I got out from children when I did fear exercise). So I thought it’s better to introduce these tools before I start my journey with the children.

I closed the session with PIPER animation video. Siva ( Teacher at IsaiAmbalam) supported me to carry out this by his active engagement.

April 22, 2017April 22, 2017

Sports Day in Isai Ambalam School:

On Friday in Isai Ambalam School we conducted sports-day for the children. The tasks were sack race, lemon in the spoon, slow cycling, running race, three legged race and Tug of war. We started with the first standard class and conducted till 7th standard. The organizers were Anitha and Sasikala. This was the first time that we conducted these game for the student . I enjoyed a lot and it was a good experience to conduct such activities for the children. Other than the participants the children were encouraging the students to win the game. Handling small children with such activities was very difficult. And I learnt that I need to have lots of energy to conduct such activities. It was a great opportunities for me and others to conduct such activities. For the winners we gave laddu and jangiri for the children. The winner got laddu and the runner got jangiri. All the children were excited and energetic.

Prathap .G

April 16, 2017April 16, 2017

Sleep over at Aaranya – The man made Forest

4th graders of IsaiAmbalam have built a pond as they were doing an EBD (Education By Design) project on water harvesting. When Sanjeev presented it in the SAIIER meeting, Saravanan the person who created the Aaranya forest came to Sanjeev and told him it was a nice effort. He also invited us to visit Aaranya forest one day.

We decided to visit the place with 35 children (4,5,6 and 7th graders of IsaiAmbalam). On 31st March we went to Aaranya. It was on Friday. We reached there around 5.00pm. Saravanan gave a little introduction to the place Aaranya and Started walking into the forest and we all followed him with great eagerness. He showed us the rare varieties of the tree like Red Sandalwood, Yellow Silk Cotton, Mullalamaram, Virali , a tree used to make Kajal (I forgot the name of the tree) etc. Also, he showed the flying fox, the wire bridge and the cuts in the ground. Children were very excited about those.

IMG_20170331_173442784_HDR

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IMG_20170331_182603872 — Yellow Silk Cotton

After the walk, we started the bonfire and it went for an hour or more. After having the dinner we all assembled in a room where the children shared what they have learned so far. Then, Saravaran showed a video about Aaranya for few minutes. Followed by that video he also played a video about wildlife. That was fun and informative.

Next morning, we all went to the forest again to fly in the flying fox, to walk in the wire bridge. Children told it was a nice experience ( unfortunately, I missed it ).

A child drew a picture of that place after we came back to school. From left the flying fox, the cuts in the ground, the wire bridge, yellow silk cotton, red sandalwood, mullalamaram, virali, the tree house, the tent where few of us slept in, the bonfire and the mesh room where everyone stayed.

IMG-20170402-WA0000

April 7, 2017

How does the world look smaller than it’s size in the map?

How does the world look smaller than itself in the map?

How do I look bigger than myself in the banners?

I had this conversation with 7th graders of Isai Ambalam. Few students seemed to be very eager to express their opinion for these questions and they all had started answering for this at the same time. I stopped all of them in the middle and I asked the rest of the children, “did anyone understand anything from what they were saying?”. ” Yes akka” Varsha told as if she heard and understood everything that has been told by everyone and rest of them told “No, I didn’t” in cores voice.

“Ok, we will go one by one akka. First I will start”, kameshwari volunteered and started saying, ” Because the world is too big that’s why they( the people who made the map) made it small, otherwise we can’t see the whole world”.

I thought I have to repeat the question as it appeared to me that the child misunderstood what I have asked them. How does the world look smaller than itself in the map? I insisted on the word ‘HOW’. She sat down in her place with the gesture saying that she was thinking.

It seemed that Akash wanted to share something, so I looked at the side he was sitting. ” I don’t know how to say that akka, I’m looking for a word. Give me a moment”, Akash said with a voice of proud and little confusion. Then Prabha(Prabhakaran) raised his hand and started,” Akka I could enlarge my photo as many times I want till it became the size you need, likewise we can reduce the size too. In other words, it’s like Zooming in Zooming out a photo”.

Akash interrupted him saying “I found it. The word I wanted to say was times… “. I thought I got the crux of the topic which I had chosen.

Later they picked up some shapes like square, rectangle, and triangle and scaled up/down to some ratios. I felt satisfied with I had done with children at the end of the class.

March 12, 2017

Checking Hard drive Partitions

To check if your hard drive has more un formatted disk space that is not being utilized do the following:

Right click on my computer icon.
Select Manage
Storage
Disk Management

You will be able to see all the partitions; allocated and un allocated.

If there is un allocated space, format the partition and add label to it and make it active.

The new drive will show up in My computer 😉

March 12, 2017March 12, 2017

Understanding Motors; Bubble Gadget

The 6th std from Udavi, Had couple of motors in their equipment stock. They were eager on biasing them. It started with removing the gear from the motor and setting a flan blade to it. The children noticed that wind was only produced in one direction when connected to terminals of a battery, it was either inward or outward. So by changing the polarity the direction of rotation also changed in the motor. Then came the idea of creating a bubble gadget( the 5th std students were playing with bubbles during the break, this gave the idea I presume) At first the students used two of the same kind of motors(same RPM) one for blowing air and the other for creating bubbles on a stick attached to a ring made by shaping copper wires into a circle and using glue gun to stick them on. This some how did not work as the both the motors were synchronized together. Then we got a 100RPM motor and used it as a substitute, this made possible of creating the bubbles 🙂 Then they cut wood to make a platform to fit the set up and nailed into a plywood and the setup looks like:

March 5, 2017March 5, 2017

Building structures with the 5th and 6th graders

Along with the students of Udavi school, we together were exploring shapes. They used the straws to build their shape with the constraints provided.

Using 12 equal straws, and to build 8 equal squares
Using 6 equal straws, and build 4 equal triangles
Using 8 equal straws of one kind and 4 equal straws of another, and to build 2 equal squares and 4 equal rectangle.
Using 8 equal straws, and to build 4 equal triangles and 1 square

5th and 6th grades: The students stared off figuring out in teams:

Using 12 equal straws, and to build 8 equal squares:

Using 6 equal straws, and build 4 equal triangles

Using 8 equal straws of one kind and 4 equal straws of another, and to build 2 equal squares and 4 equal rectangle.

Then the students came up with their own constraints and built the following:

January 16, 2017March 6, 2017

Savarirayulu Government School visit to StemLand

Mrs. Hemavathi ( the principal of Savarirayulu govt. girls high school) had visited us a few weeks back and spent a day at STEMland talking to children and seeing their work. Hemavathi is the general secretary of the Pondicherry Science Forum and a very respected teacher trainer in the government. She was thrilled with the motivation and self-direction of the children who she saw were able to work independently and effectively. In her visitor note she wrote that STEM land gives her hope.

She put this in action and this week she organized all her 20 odd teachers to come during the holiday to STEM Land for training. We also prepared for a 4 hrs module on teacher training including use of stewardship tools that look choice of working from possibility and fears and doing things differently. We then jumped into getting teachers who had been fearful of computers for 30-40 yrs to program with scratch. The teachers were very engaged and delayed their lunch by an hour and a half to work.

They also interacted with children and their reflections at the end of the day gave us hope of changes in attitudes both towards technology and how they work with children. We felt that this school is the first government school to whom we are going to partner with for training and continued work with the children.

Here is what we personally felt about the workshop with the teachers,

Arun:

Teachers’ sharing:

A Computer teacher requested her school teachers not to be strict to children and instruct each and every movement of the child. Instead she wants teachers to show love and care so that the children don’t move into fears. She added that children will have the courage to ask doubts if that happen.
I had an assumption that the Govt school teachers won’t be open to learning. But Kabilan (8th Grader) taught scratch to the computer teachers and they were very open to learning no matter who was teaching them.

Insight:

Freedom is an universal value.

Bala:

From people sharing:

At lunch, I told the teachers that they can sit anywhere and have their food. A teacher replied saying that ‘you are giving so much freedom to your children and we know that we are allowed to sit anywhere we want’. It struck me that not many schools give freedom to children to make their choices.
A teacher at my table said that creating projects in the computer is real learning and very different from other schools where they simply give internal marks without doing anything.
A teacher said that he stood for all the values – I had the same thought one day, for me to happy I have to be in all the universal values. Was interesting to hear someone had the same thought as me.
Another teacher shared about how she was always for others and this was the first time she had time to think about herself and her values/stand.

My insights:

I was able to look at the wisdom profile of the teachers. Before, I looked at their social profile and made assumptions. I was able to break it.
I learnt to look at situations from different perspectives/lenses.

Prathap:

Whatever I do, I have to love it and do (work). This requires sincerity, responsibility and progress. All those will come if I love what I do. This is what I learned from the teacher’s insight.
The other insight was that if I have a problem in my project, I have to see that with different perception or from all points of view and sort out the problem.
If students didn’t do their work, I have to connect their stand with what they do and make them to work from their stand instead of their fears. It doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be firm (on my objectives) on what I want to see in a larger picture.

Sundar:

What i was inspired with:

Elder gentleman, who stood for all values but had to enter with his own door into this whole set of universal values.
‘I need to express myself as i and not as we all the time, i don’t have to talk for the sake of others’
High value for children coming from not that high class background.

Vaidegi:

My insights are,

Age doesn’t matter. All I need is Enthusiasm and courage to accept and create what I want to see in the society.
Sincerity and being rigorous are what I learned from Hemavathi.
It gave a new lens to look at what is meant by a TEACHER.

October 22, 2016October 22, 2016

Stewardship workshop for the teachers

We did the Stewardship for New Emergence workshop for the teachers of Babaji Vidyashram School, Chennai and for the teachers who visited Auroville from the North. The tools we introduced were Stand, fear and deep listening. We did 4 profiles also at Babaji.

Reason I did it : Provide a space for everyone to explore and grow.

My learnings : Noticed my interpretation and facts, identified areas to work on as a PC.

July 16, 2016July 16, 2016

2015/16 9th grade daily plan @ STEMland

9thPlan – 2015/16

Last year 2015/16 we asked the children to fill out their daily plan on an excel sheet. The above link downloads the excel. This year 2016/17 the children are making weekly plans and not daily plans!