Aura Auro Design is now a year old! We put together a small reflection of the year gone by! Here is the pdf.
Aura Auro Design – First year reflection
learn,
grow, work, teach
Sanjeev Ranganathan, Bala Anand, Sundranandhan Kothandaraman, Vaidegi
Gunasekar
Jan
2016
About this note
Aura Auro Design, a project of SAIIER, is a team
of engineers Sanjeev (AV), Sundar (AV), Bala (AV) and Vaidegi
(Bio-region) who teach in the schools (Udavi and Isai Ambalam) 3 hrs
a day and learn, grow and work in electronics 5 hrs a day. The
project explores innovative ways of STEM education primarily through
their STEM Land initiative. The team also finacially supports Udavi
and Isai Ambalam schools, Reach for the starts program and AV
maintenance.
At the end of the first year of Aura Auro Design
we report briefly our activities in the first year, reflect if we are
aligned with our original goals and what direction or goals we set
going forward.
Brief summary of goals of Aura Auro Design
-
Exploring if an alternative business model where the primary goal is
personal development and growth of its staff and contribution to
community can be effective in the real world.
-
To create an enviroment where skilled youth can engage with children
in schools to learn beyond simple procedural learning from 5th
to 8th
grades and move into application and problem solving.
-
To create an alternative to examinations as a way for children to
demonstrate their learning.
Some activities of the first year
- Engagement with Isai
Ambalam school and Udavi school 3 hrs a day
- Participation in the
Stewardship for New Emergence workshop and working with Dr.Monica
Sharma to look at system parameters to include in our work to be
effective in the long term
- Learning about
learning – reading and presenting chapters of – what did you ask
at school today by Kamala Mukunda
- Taking up two courses
of Interactive Python through Coursera and make variety of python
games
- Conducting an
electonics class open to anyone in and around AV that used
simulations and building circuits as a way to practical learn
electronics
- Noticing breakdown of
replicating and propogating the same patterns of education we wanted
to address and the breakthrough of creation of STEM Land
- Creating a space for
youth to come in and interact (and learn) with children and build
things with them
- Slowly seeing
engagement from children from various schools of Auroville in STEM
Land (Isai Ambalam, TLC, Last School) in the hope of enabling
learning engagement between children of various schools, backgrounds
and nationalities
- Making progress on 3
software projects (80% completion) and 1 hardware project (90%) that
was proposed by Aura Semiconductor Pvt. Ltd.
- Putting aside time
(three hrs a week) during work time to read
- Tracking our growth
and documenting the work of children through the blog
www.auraauro.com
- Presenting a paper at
epiSTEM6 at HBCSE (Homi Baba Center of Science Education)
- Learning to work
together and collaborate, moving towards a Likert-Emberling Stage 4
organization
Papers and Articles
in 2015
-
Ranganathan, S., Anand, B., Kothandaraman, S. & Gunasekar, V.
(Dec 2015) Using programming with rural children for learning to
think mathematically, epiSTEM6,
HSCSE (Homi Baba Center of Science Education)
-
AV Times (Dec 2015), ALICE in STEM Land
- The Hindu
(Oct 2015), Making, tinkering and engineering their way to knowledge
Beief conclusions
- We needed to keep the
priority of learning and growth over work often in mind to avoid
getting carried away with deadlines, products and short term
efficiency. Though it requires a partner company that is
understanding of our work holistically, it has been possible to make
some progress on projects with Aura
Semiconductor Pvt. Ltd and they are continuing to support Aura Auro
this year.
- It is possible to
create a space where children can learn through inspiration rather
than through compliance. It is significantly more effort for teachers
vs 'efficient' classroom teaching and requires us to be true to AV
goals of constant progress and unending education.
We have been inspired
with the work done by children to demonstrate what they are capable
of when given a chance. http://www.auraauro.com/category/showcase/
Going forward:
- The work at STEM Land
is meaningful not only for the children we are working with, but also
for children throughout the country. But, we need a lot more rigor
and research to make this happen.
- We need to find
mechanisms of accelerated growth as electrical engineers and work on
time management and presence to be effective at work in the time we
have allocated to it.
- We need additional
people to support our work at STEM Land and will be supporting
another youth Naveen (AV) to help us organize the space and keep it
open from 9:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. Mon-Sat.
- We hope for a
richer interactive experience with Aura Semi this year and also grow
the number of youth supported in the project to 5 over the course of
six months (June).
Reflections from the
team
1)
Bala Anand
I
started the year as a novice knowing very little about work and life.
Aura Auro has brought a big change to me. I have learnt a lot during
this one year.
As
Aura Auro is an electronics centre, it is essential that I am good at
it. I knew very little at the beginning. Aura Aura has given me an
oppurtunity to learn and grow as an Engineer. I have learnt to
anaylse circuits, run simulations, build PCB boards, windows and
linux administration, programming in python, etc... I am learning to
design circuits, working efficiently by managing time and being
organized and learning to work being part of a team.
Teaching
was completely new to me. Over the year I have come to terms in
managing a class. It gives me happiness to guide the children and
share some of the knowledge I have.
Setting
up STEM land in Udavi was a big learning curve. I was put in
situations where I felt I was responsible. Though I did fail at times
it was a learning experience.
We
presented a paper in Mumabi, episteme 6 – international conference
on Stem education. It gave us an oppurtunity to talk about the
different things we do at school. The paper was accepted well and
felt that we are going in the right direction.
Making
contributions to schools and to Auroville makes me feel that I am
doing something to the society around me.
Attending
Steward for New Emergence (by Monica Sharma) workshop early in the
year was a big positive for me. I learnt lots of tools and that
helped me at work, school and personally.
Overall
Aura Auro has been a place where I am growing daily, learning
and experimenting new things.
2)
Sundranandhan Kothandaraman
Time
Lapse
The
year 2014-2015 was diverse and had a lot of beautiful experiences to
offer me. Being part of Aura Auro Design team the learning as an
engineer was extensive. I can tell this journey is offering me a lot
not only as an engineer, but also a teacher. The Whole oneness of
learn,
grow, work, teach
has made me realize something special, that I am exploring on how to
offer at various instances of being myself...
Working
with children is a sense of blossomness, I see myself grow along with
the children. Wanting to learn something comes form a inner space of
the freedom to learn it, that is the experience I share along with
the children towards their growth at STEM Land. The work shop
Stewardship for new emergence has given me a whole new perspective
approach to accomplishment of specific goals and evaluation measures
on them.
3)
Vaidegi Gunasekar
My
stands are Perseverance and Agency (capacity
to act in any given situation). AuraAuro laid a clear path for
my career as well as social activities (teaching). In this duration
of one year I learnt many things in Electronics (which I never even
thought of in my under graduation) and Teaching (how to teach and
classroom management). This gives me satisfaction on what I did in
the entire course of learning.
As
an Engineer
I
can see myself that I'm growing as Engineer. I'm not doing the same
work repeatedly. Everyday I'm doing something new or in different
way. This makes me think, engage and apply thoughts based on my
previous mistakes. AuraAuro also created space to collaborate and
discuss when I face an issue or when I build something.
As
a Teacher
As
per my perspective, a teacher was one who give all the instructions
(what to do and don't). But Aura Auro broke that idea. It created a
environment where I observe and guide the students instead of giving
them each and every instruction to do something. In the middle I
learnt being 'effective' is more important than being 'nice' to all
the children.
I
also learnt that “ If you want to understand something,
change it. But, if you want to change something, understand it.”
4)
Sanjeev Ranganathan
Aura
Auro has been an amazing growth experience and helped me undestand
the gaps in my engagement with children. I find I am finally
beginning to understand Sri Aurobindo's first principle of true
teaching that nothing can be taught and starting to take my first
steps towards being an integral teacher.
STEM
Land offers a possibility of putting free progress in action with
children or attempting to teach not by compliance, but by
inspiration...but much work is needed, both on us and by us in the
future.
References
Mukunda,
K.V. (2009) What
Did You Ask at School Today, Harper
Collins.
A Big Thank you to
- To Saracon and
Chandresh for providing us the workspace to initiate this effort.
- To Aura Semiconductor
Pvt. Ltd. for supporting this initiative financially and providing
challenges for us technically
- To the stewardship
for the new emergence program for leadership development and helping
us work as a team from possibility rather than fear
- To the many people
who helped us set up STEM Land including (but not exclusively) -
SAIIER for their support on purchase of materials, equipment, books,
etc. For letting us revamp and use two cupboards that were up for
disposal, Freecharge.com for second hand laptops, friends for
purchasing robots and puzzles. Sree Nair for donating bigshot cameras
he designed. Aura Semi for inverters. PCG for the second mindstorm
and some new games and puzzles, children for organizing STEM Land
themselves.
About our partner
Aura Semiconductor Pvt. Ltd.
Aura Semiconductor is a fabless semiconductor
company providing high performance RF & analog solutions. Aura
Semiconductor was founded in 2010 with focus on developing technology
leadership in the areas of RF, clocking, audio and power management.
