Technology for good

We start with 3 apparently unrelated incidents:
- Last week I decided to keep some time aside everyday on the really high-end design world I used to be part of. Seven years back I moved to Auroville and pretty much stopped working on designing analog and RF chips, the stuff I was trained for, through my undergrad and PhD at I.I.T.M, Columbia by truly phenomenal professors (KRK, Tsividis), who helped me love electronics.

- I was observing the WhatsApp chat discussion of my college group where it was remarked that technology was value neutral (e.g. facebook) and its the people who use it who are to blame.

- I was contacted by my mentor (who works on development) about a report on the increase in child abuse online at a time of Carona virus and an AI intervention that was aimed to reduce it and what I could do to support such interventions.

A recurring question on my mind has been about the claim of technology being value neutral. I realized my question is perhaps not about technology itself i.e. I'm not talking about a cellphone (though we can now talk to one!), a water filter, a 100 GBs data network, an automatic machine gun, or an atomic bomb (though the last two are perhaps questionable). My question is more of the people behind the technology who built/create/sustain them, engineers like me who make a choice, or do we?

It made me reflect where I have been touched by technology as part of my personal journey in the last 7 yrs at Auroville.
- I first used basic electronics to give children something to tinker with switches, batteries, LEDs, 7 segment displays, sensors, arduinos, etc. This helped children get curious, work with their hands, think logically and be creative.
- Of course I used the internet to learn about stuff I could do with children and document it (at least in the initial couple of years) before starting STEM land - Aura Auro Design (when you youth started blogging and I stopped blogging).
- STEM land-Aura Auro Design that I started  5 years back was created on the backbone of technology. It is an entity where youth could volunteer with children in the mornings and be able to learn and work on technology in the afternoon. Here I learned and used python programming along with the youth. Again we used Coursera online learning and training platforms to learn. In time we also offered courses in programming, hands on electronics and so on.
- At STEM land the centers we created with children we used programming with children to learn to think mathematically and for them to improve their reasoning and logical ability. As a way to express their mastery with something other than examinations, by creating projects in areas their learned. We also used some robotics with children and over the years children have built projects like the electronic voting machine as part of the process of understanding elections.
- With a bit of an effort Isai Ambalam school was connected to the NKN that helped us get access to materials and videos online for children. Most of the material we could put online was thanks to this. We also put a couple of computers in classrooms for teachers and children to have a way to look things up quickly. Some of the children even used these to access videos on how to draw, solve the rubiks cube, and learned these. Overall all the access to the internet and putting out information has been valuable it even helped set up the Support a child program that is maintained by the youth of STEM land and gets in almost half the funds needed to sustain the school.
- About a year back we started working on a group ramping up on VLSI layout so a few youth are supported through this. About 9 months back we also started engaging with Quilt.AI an ethical product research company this brought in some data-science and again programming to show data and trends and scraping. In parallel a group also started on content creation desk research and blogging based on data research and AI data. We now have three tech groups and one content group of youth and all part of a learning organization that is supporting personal journeys of youth learn a skill, mature into looking at their socialization and discover what they really care for - their purpose. As a learning organization time can be put aside for meditation, leadership, etc. In a year on an average we spend a month or more on working on oneself. Also built in are contributions to the community both in terms or time and monitory.
To me while these are not high-end technology and (perhaps some are use of technology), but I consider them technology for good - used for learning, growth of children and the youth. The intent was to use technology for good, be it the projects we or children make, courses we offer or the skills, competencies and inner capacities acquired when working with companies.

Coming back to the three unrelated incidents, in the third, I attempted to explain to my mentor that my expertise as an engineer was not AI but in creating core hardware technology and what I could do was point her to those in my organization dealing with AI. It was nice to know, that the people we are working with can address responsible use of technology.

The second incident I think is oft repeated by us engineers ourselves not necessarily because we believe every product is value neutral, but because it makes our life easier to accept the larger system that govern the products we work on - markets, investors, customers, etc. I wonder if the more educated and specialized we get, 'professionally' we are left with lesser choices in the 'real world'. One solution of course has been what I did the last 7 yrs, not let my specialization be my prison and respond with what was needed for what was around me. Even this year, the choice I am making is to  keep my skills up-to-date, understand new processes, methodologies and technologies to appropriately guide the team that is building up here that works on tech for good.

I am (was?) a fairly good engineer (I have the best paper award at ISSCC and over a billion products show for it) and the question for myself after 7 yrs of working on 'technology for good' is what choices will exist for me for doing the same in the 'real world'.

As Ani joked (as only a spouse can), brain the size of a planet what are you doing with it, in response to when I am in a thoughtful or pondering over are how to support the youth and children I work with make more progress and utilize the opportunities presented to them (perhaps, to 'my' expectations), how to resolve an impasse in my community (where I live and work) that could help it be at its full potential. Things that I need Vipassana for, that allow me to see things as they are, that I can create opportunity for growth, but growth is a choice and that the longer you live in a place the bigger any problem looks! To address them, I still myself, free myself from expectation, create space for others to breath and hope for a quiet insight.
Issues in the technical problems in comparison are significantly well behaved than human problems and looking inside is limited to clearing a cluttered mind. But, perhaps, applying the same methodology as I have to human problems even when I am in a 'pure technology' world may give other solutions than I have found in the past.

Change in culture

Four years back when I moved to Auroville I would post one or two puzzles a week on the school notice board at Udavi. I had announced them in the classes I taught and there were always two children U and D in the school (in 10th grade) who would attempt to answer the puzzles. They would discuss the puzzles among themselves and often submit a solution to the puzzles. Sometimes they would have doubts and come and explain their logic to me and ask me to find a flaw.
I did some visual puzzles with arranging match sticks and these some of the 6th graders were interested in, but by and large, I got one or two solutions for the puzzles with barely any discussion about the puzzles.

Last week Naveen took up the exercise of putting up a puzzle a week in STEM Land. There has been quite some discussion about the puzzle - the 9th graders applying algebra to solve it and the younger attempting to do it without algebra. I even noticed a volunteer who has come to learn STEM has been attempting to solve it. 

It remains to be seen how much of this buzz translates to children taking the initiative to submit their queries, especially as we have not marked any prizes for their submissions. Nonetheless, I can see a change in culture, of attempting puzzles, that was missing in the children before.

Deep learning...

Someone had recently asked me to give them an example of what I considered deep learning.

The STEM Land (@ Udavi) display that the children in the 9th grade had broken down and a couple of letters were not lighting up. A couple of children in the 7th grade had expressed interest to fix the display. I had walked them through how powering a leg of the display lights up one of the 7 segments (and the decimal point). They had been fascinated by being able to fix something and over a couple of classes went ahead and fixed it.

After fixing the board and seeing it work one of the children was interested in doing something more with the Arduino. What the 9th graders had done was the treat a digit as a unit and light up one digit at a time, etc without changing the essential message of what was being printed. But this child wanted to do more. He wired up the 7 segments to a separate Arduino pin and wanted to control them individually.

He managed to light up a 1 by end of a class. I mentioned to him that this will soon get out of hand if he did not start organizing the code (in a language he was learning) into functions.

Later that day one of my youth asked me to give them an example of deep learning in STEM Land.

The next morning B didn't have a class, but during lunch, he came by and asked me to show him what these functions are. I told him that it was similar to the setup and loop that are already present, but with any name he wanted and they could be called into action when needed, similar to the blocks in Scratch. His face immediately lit up and he said ok, I understand blocks.

He had an activity class after lunch and he sat down to implement what he had in mind. He ran into a couple of errors of syntax (defn of functions needs matching '{}', calling functions in C needs '()' ), but then he did not ask for me for about 45 minutes. Then he came to me and said that he needs some help in extending the functionality. I went up and saw what he had done and realized that he had made a single digit counter that went from 1 to 9 every one second. He had now decided to make a clock out of the arduino and had added a second 7 segment display to get the second digit of the clock he needed. I thought he would have missed the logic of the first digit continuing to run when the second was set, but he had got that logic right and implemented this as well. 

I could find nothing wrong with his program and I think was a little surprised how much he was able to progress in a single session starting from wiring up getting the logic of an entire set of digits right and moving on to the next logically. Perhaps, the issue is with the hardware and we are attempting to draw too much current from the USB and none of the displays were lighting up. The debug continues
...but it gave me an answer to what I presently consider an example of deep learning, taking a concept in an entirely different context from blinking light->fixing a 7segment display->individual control of segments and putting it all together to shift between digits in the hope of creating a clock with very little help from an adult.

Of course, there are not enough outputs in the Arduino to create all the digits of a full-fledged clock and I let him know, but it seemed he was happy with what he could get.

Second STEM Land at Isai Ambalam

We started a second center of STEM Land at Isai Ambalam School on 1st March. The children at the school had been learning the games and puzzles and had set up stalls to engage those who had come. Some had created small projects like a name board with a welcome sign to a few 5 graders explaining a small LED circuit with a switch and a resistor, to games that the children had put up.
The 9th graders from Udavi had come for the inauguration and also brought their own games, rubiks cubes, etc to show the younger ones at Isai Ambalam the spirit of STEM land.

The opening is well documented in the following posts. 
http://www.auraauro.com/stem-land/stem-land-inauguration-at-isaiambalam/
http://www.auraauro.com/school/inauguration-stem-land-isai-ambalam-overview/

I wanted to talk about one moment of the opening ceremony when the entire Aura Auro team (7 people) were at the entrance. We could see all the people engage with the stalls and no one noticed any of us missing or all of us had gathered together. I just let it soak and we waited for a few minutes before starting the silent clap that slowly gathers steam till everyone was paying attention.

The best moments of a teacher are the moments when you are no longer needed.

Multiplication tables with children who never learnt it

There are children who are able to hold their fort without knowing the multiplication tables in the calculations in Mathematics. Some are quick at addition, some remember specific tables and extrapolate quickly. They survive till 9th grade where powerful mathematical concepts are introduced with milder calculations and are able to generally manage.

However, for most children for whom the number sense has not landed and are slow with calculations, the lack of knowing the tables is a serious hindrance in survival and any possibility of enjoying mathematics.

We took up the challenge of identifying 7th, 8th (and 9th) graders who did not know their tables. We worked with the children in identifying what they already knew - generally the 2, 5 tables. For a couple of children, the short-cut for the 9 tables was quick and they were comfortable with using that quickly. Some have the hand rules for 6x6 onwards, but it appears too slow for practical use. The table tricks were kludgy and not used e.g. some knew methods to write down the 7 tables, but it was too easy and not practiced enough to be usable in action and certainly not at random.

The common issues for children were 3x6 to 3x9, 4 tables, 6x6 to 6x9, 7x7 to 7x9, 8x8 and 8x9. I looked at a demo of the Vaughn Cube. Now, the demo is public domain and looking at the video it is easy to figure out how it works. They have given enough in the video (unknowingly?) to figure out not just how it works, but work out the details of the method. The rest of the post is about our Indian hack of the same and what we did with it.

The idea is simple, replace mathematical facts with objects that you need to remember in a 3-D room. The sounds t(1), n(2), m(3), r(4), l(5), ch(6), ka(7), f(8), p(9) are memorized in simple ways. An advantage of an object between two number is that it both 3x7 = 7x3 are the same. Iya one of the children who had a lot of difficulty with learning the tables announced that other than the 8 and 9 tables he knew everything. When I drew a pic of the 9 tables on his request he suddenly realized 9x3 = 3x9. Hey Anna, 9x3 is the same as 3x9. Then he noticed that all the other objects were also familiar, this makes the table so much easier he added. I had attempted to convey the same to him earlier and when I shared his Aha moment with his teacher she remarked that she had told him as much many times. I guess, it doesn't matter how many times someone tells me something, it only matters when I get it.

What we did with it. 
1: Game: Figure out as many of these combinations by watching the video. As it gets tedious, use the skip forward and back feature to make it a little interesting.
2: Exercise: Practice with what you know and find out what is missing.
3: Project: Make a mini project in Scratch that shows the objects as you type in the questions.
4: Practice, Practice, Practice
5: Project: Make a game that tests rigor by asking tables at random, build on it to time yourself. By now I have quite a few kids who want us to test them because they have gotten so good at it.

Some notes, 
- With some practice, the children who had given up on the tables in the past were able to remember tables.

- However, these are mathematical facts and it lacks a logical framework that children can work with when things go wrong. e.g. if the child remembers the wrong object it can be an absurd result.
- I'm still sticking with when all else fails (flash cards, logic of knowing 5 tables, knowing squares and adding and subtracting) perhaps give visualization a try.

From '15 does not have a square root' to 'what is the square root of 0.05'

After such a long break I though I will start with something simple. A couple of questions from children. A couple of weeks back one child said 15 does not have a square root (only 16 does and that is 4). I wondered what kind of creatures children thought surds are. I had done some square root work with 10 graders using graphs and it seemed to give them some idea that these are also numbers of some sort a month back, but it was a passing comment and I let it go.

Recently, a volunteer started coming into STEM Land and I asked him as I ask all adults to work on some projects to inspire children. I suggested creating some sort of graph in scratch for children to see the squares of non-whole numbers. He started it and got as far as creating squares for whole numbers (similar to what the 7th graders with Sundar did last year) and then gave up, preferring to use his time more productively by finding children who wanted to be taught.

Anyway, another week went by and I decided to take up this project and made a rudimentary squaring version with visual boxes (my hope is always to make something functional, but so terrible that anyone who sees it will want to modify it :-)). I went in yesterday and showed it to the volunteer. One child came by and asked what we were up to (never underestimate the curiosity of a child), I showed him, then another, then another kid. They played with it for some time. Then I modified the program to calculate a square root. This seemed to garner a little more interest. They started playing with the program and one of the 10th graders had an activity class and connected it to the graphs he had drawn and started explaining it to the younger kids. My work was done and I walked off leaving the computer to them.

Towards the later half of the session one girl came to me and asked me what the square root of 60 was. I walked her through my guess and she concurred, but murmered something about off screen. A little later she came back and asked me what the square root of 0.05 was. Hey where did that come from? She explained that she was tying to figure out how small a figure she can get and saw the really small square of just 4 of 1/100 and she triggered the software by asking it to calculate the closest square to 0.05. 

I went back and put 60 into the program and realized she was testing where the program ran out of space to fill the boxes. Boundary conditions, interesting...

[Thanks Swathi for suggesting graph notebooks and that areas up to 2 decimal places can naturally be represented in a graph notebook.]

Boring digression from the story:

If we look at a regular graph sheet it is divided into large 1 cm squares. Within these the squares are split vertically 1 mm lines and horizontally in 1 mm thin lines. There are also helpful guide lines at 5 mm that are a little thicker than the 1 mm lines. These lines divide a single square into 10 vertical pieces (0.1) and 10 horizontal pieces (0.1) and together into 100 smaller 1mm^2 squares. The big square is whole and a smaller square is 0.01.

Here is a picture:

Children are comfortable with decimal numbers on the scale. They can easily mark out 5.4 cm on the graph paper and soon realize that its 5 dark lines and 4 light lines. 

If we marked 5 cm in both x and y axis and completed the square we will get 25 full squares. No surprise, area is multiplication.

The same happens if we mark 5.4 cm in both x and y axis. What is the area of this? The following image may be a helpful... 25 big squares (=25), 4 rods x 5 (4x0.1x5 = 2) vertical and same horizontal (=2) and 4x4 (1/100) (=0.16). 

Now playing with modified program of a square root.

Here are the programs to play, break and make something better!

Squaring program     : https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/115474246/

Square root program: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/115470991/

A year of Aura Auro Design

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 5^th to 8^th 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)

www.auraauro.com/showcase/

- 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.

A Reflection on “Nothing can be Taught”

I reflected upon my interpretation at different times as a teacher.

of Sri Aurobindo’s: 'The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught.'¹

When I started teaching I wanted to be a good teacher. I planned my classes, used many resources and TLM (Teaching Learning Material), had many classes with activities, attempted to open the minds of children, and took a lot of notes. A workshop called the 'Stewardship for a New Emergence' helped me notice my growth as a teacher and capture the fleeting insights - it helped me be more patient and capable of listening to children. At this time, I interpreted the first principle of teaching as the learning I was going through to be a better teacher and a better person through my experience. I took the principle to refer to spiritual experiences that are our own. For example, in a typical classroom I would teach different points of view, or of looking at something to support diversity or handle misconceptions and children would work with TLM and at times the computer².

As I continued working with children I noticed that my best classes were not the ones I prepared the most. Some classes had a flow and some, in spite of planning (and a few because of much planning) were hard. An almost identical incident or comment from children that derailed one class would have no impact in another. I noticed that this had less to do with the environment around me or what children experienced at home and more to do with the environment I was carrying with me to the classrooms and who I was being while I was in the class. I also noticed children were learning more when I was instructing less. Practically, my classes were getting more activity based with much peer learning and less lecturing. I often used computers with children creating projects to learn the material. I read up on constructivist theory and learned that each child (and adult) builds their own knowledge and I only needed to create an environment to let learning happen. I noticed that it was my 'I have a PhD and can show other ways of doing this' ego that was coming in the way of learning and was able to consciously make a choice to let opportunities to teach go, and let opportunities for learning flourish. My interpretation of Sri Aurobindo’s first principle at that time was that this also applies to practical learning through a constructivist approach³.

Some time has passed since then and I no longer see spiritual growth and practical learning as two distinct applications of the first principle of true teaching. It appears that every true learning is with the engagement of our entire being and is spiritual and helps us follow our core. Practically, now the environment I am working to create at STEM Land is such that a session with children is about self-discovery. It’s not about a procedure or the underlying concept, but about their experience. The environment offers choice and looks to the children to take responsibility for their learning. I do instruct, children do projects, but it happens when the need comes up from the children⁴.

---

1. Sri. Aurobindo, (1910) The Human Mind, Karmayogin.

2.  Ranganathan, S. (2014) Program to encourage critical thinking in children – 2013-2014. Grant report by Udavi School to SAIIER.

3.  Ranganathan S., Anand B., Kothandaraman S. and Gunasekar V. (Dec 2015) Using programming with rural children For Learning to think mathematically, epiSTEM 6 HBCSE, IITB.

4.  Ranganathan S., STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) Land and Resource Center (2015) Grant proposal to SAIIER.

16 Dec 2015 epiSTEME6 conference presentation

Presentation that goes with the paper on epiSTEME6 conference.

Stroll through STEM Land

I made a 3 minute video of a stroll through STEM Land on a Sat. We (Aura Auro team) are together at the same time with multiple classes and a few children from around who join us. Here is the video:

A few notes:

- The display for STEM Land was made last week by a few children. It switches between a 5  sets of ways of how STEM Land is displayed. The children soldered the board together programmed an arduino to switch between these (with help from Naveen). Here is a blog post with more about this.

- We recently added dobble, blockus and another abalone to STEM Land. Blokus is another great strategy game and dobble is excellent for observation with different scaling. These additions are popular and extremely good in brain twisting skills. 

(We also got bounce off and jungle speed which are also very popular though I am not as convinced about their utility to learning :).)

- Children have been working quite a bit on Alice a 3D programming environment. This allows children to stretch the programming they were introduced to in scratch with a 2D stage to a 3D world. Here is a note on a game that Rati is creating.

- Blender has also picked up and few children children have learnt more or less on their own. Vaidegi also started putting the 3D printer in action first with things available online and then with learning blender herself this has added the idea of being able to create what you make in blender. The implicit mathematics and visualizing in modeling 3D images is excellent. With the printer you couple this with what can actually be made nicely.

- The 'fan' is a salvaged (thanks Lata) and the children added an external battery adapter (since the one inside had rusted) and Puni is explaining how he noticed that it acts more as an exhaust picking up things rather than what he expected of pushing things away.

- One group of students have become quite good at putting together mindstorm robots. The first one took them 2 weeks. This is their fifth robot and it just took them 2 days to put together. Here is a link with a snake robot in action.

- We have started salvaging old boards that I had around to get components we can use elsewhere and started a fix it lab. We fixed our first phone...yay, more on this later.

- A few Isai Ambalam children join us on Sat since its their day off and so do a few children from Auroville.

Playing, tinkering, making and learning is alive in STEM Land.

Experiences at STEM Land...

A few recent experiences at STEM Land that touched me...


- I have been touched how elder and younger children with similar interest are willing to work together as equals. How open elder children are to learn from younger children who have developed an expertise at something.
- We didn't spend a single rupee on labor to set up STEM Land. A big we (Aura Auro, our friends, volunteers and the children) did it ourselves.


- I had decided that I was going to let STEM Land self organize. One day some younger children came to me and told me that a couple of elder children had taken their laptops. I told them to work it out among themselves. About 10 mins later I had opportunity to work with the elder children and I enquired what happened. The elder children without batting an eyelid said that STEM Land is a place of work and they only took the laptops from two children who were playing computer games and not working seriously.


- We started working with the 9th grade girls only this term and in the beginning they would only stay in the games, materials room and not explore the technology room. This week I had a couple of girls working hard to create a story using programming in a 3-D environment and connect their mathematics to what they wanted to accomplish. Another group has been working on soldering a display for STEM Land with N.


- A few Isai Ambalam (the other school I work with) children come to STEM Land on Sat (their day off). They just felt at home and the Udavi children took care of them as their own when they are here for the whole day. A couple of Auroville children have started coming to STEM Land once a week and were unfamiliar with the programming environment and some Udavi children sat next to them and worked and helped them when they were stuck and I was only called once for help during two sessions of 1-1/2 hrs that they worked here.

- N who has completed his undergrad in EE wanted to volunteer at STEM Land I asked him not to worry about teaching children and just focus on using STEM Land facilities for his own growth. When he started working he realized that children could do many more things than him and learnt from them. 
When we were opening STEM Land we split the opening speech in 2 min sections between four of us at Aura Auro and the children were cheering for each of the youth. When we had completed the children cheered and asked N also to speak. He said, he comes here to learn and have fun.

- A couple of other youth who graduated from Udavi also come in on Sat in the afternoons and engage with children or play abalone among themselves. I get back to Aura Auro at 2:00 so I wasn't quite sure what to do when the Isai Ambalam kids were here the first week and needed to stay later. The youth said don't worry I'll stay here and lock up once they leave. Next week the Isai Ambalam kids were telling me that they will lock up themselves!

Opening of STEM Land and Hindu article

We had a wonderful opening at STEM Land with children from Udavi and Isai Ambalam hosting games and puzzles stalls and demonstrations of their work at STEM Land.  Here are photographs from the opening.

One interesting thing that happened was a couple of students Pree and Yuv decided to work together on creating "STEM Land" with a bunch of 7 segment displays and actually completed it over the duration of the event. They were also able to make the display blink as Subash who was observing their product asked for. They built this with an Arduino. Naveen who is volunteering at STEM Land is now working on soldering this together so STEM Land has a display at the entrance.

The Hindu covered the event. Here is a photo of the article. I can't find the uploaded version of the article so the pic would have to do.

There has been a lot of energy since the opening and children wanted to learn python and do 3-D modeling. We started, but the progress was slow and I researched for something more advanced than scratch that could do more and found Alice 3. A 3D world that is similar to scratch with drag and drop, but with significantly higher possibilities and complexity. Children are loving it a couple of them have been keen on blender as well. 

STEM Land inauguration on Friday 9 Oct 2015

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Land is an space exploring Science and Mathematics holistically with active use of Technology and Engineering (deriving principles from experience), its also a resource center with Math and Science materials, a maker space and a puzzles and games library. 
Its impossible to describe what STEM Land is, you need to experience it. Come join the adventure and start exploring STEM Land at the opening and a small fair at STEM Land @Udavi school at 10:45 a.m. on 9th Oct [Main Building], Auroville.
Please RSVP so we can have enough snacks (healthy and unhealthy) for everyone.

If you want to read more about STEM Land, please take a look at http://www.auraauro.com/stemland/

Why STEM Land?

Though STEM is an acronym it can also refer to an approach to science and math education that is oriented towards application and making, tinkering and engineering. Its Land and not Lab because we are targeting a culture of learning rather than teaching and just as in France children learn French just fine and in Tamil Nadu children learn Tamil just fine, we hope that children will learn STEM naturally in STEM Land. 

Team:

The center is being initiated by the team (Bala, Sundar, Sanjeev, Vaidegi) of Aura Auro Design. But, we are well aware that the use of the center will involve a lot more and be driven by the interest of the children to learn.

Thanks to:

- Big Sanjeev and Udavi school for providing us space and up-ing it based on enthusiasm of the children.

- SAIIER who have provided us with the funding at just the right time to set up the center.

- Many other friends Ram, Gaurav, Shree, freecharge (company) for supporting materials that are being used at STEM Land.

- Many of our friends who helped us set up the center voluntarily, we spent no money on labor and did all the work ourselves and with friends. 

- Naturally, thanks to Aura for supporting Aura Auro Design without which this would have never become a reality.

Completed paper on children learning using computers

Many things have kept me away from blogging. This post is about the first, refining a paper that has been accepted at epiSTEM6. epiSTEM is a biennial Conference Series, to Review Research in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education conducted by Homi Baba Center of Science Education and IIT Bombay.

As Heidi Watts who helped me rethink the paper put it the paper now is about how children learn rather than about mathematics or computers. It has case studies on how children have learnt by trying to explain something to the computer through programming. 
Thanks also to Vaibhav who proof read the first version that got accepted, but both he and I knew it wasn't up to the mark then :).

Below is the abstract. Here is the link to the paper.

Using programming with rural children For Learning to think mathematically

Sanjeev Ranganathan, Bala Anand, Sundranandhan Kothandaraman, Vaidegi Gunasekar

Aura Auro Design, SAIIER (Auroville, India), sanjeev@auraauro.com

Is it possible to use computer labs in a rural setting that encourages reasoning, visualization, abstraction in children (as envisioned in NCF 2005) while at the same time addressing curricular needs?

This paper addresses the question through the use of programming in two rural schools including integration of curricular areas for fractions, cube roots, algebra, compound interest, data handling, geometry, etc.

We explore three styles of instruction - projects for children to demonstrate their understanding, challenges to visualize abstract concepts, and games created by children themselves for mastery.

On work and play...

At an educational meeting we went about making a distinction between 'work and play'. The closest I could come up with was that work was an activity being done that is useful for others and play was an activity not meant to be useful. Of course, I knew it was flawed, self-work is useful for others intangibly and for professional cricketers play is actually work. Of course this doesn't start to capture where work and play seem all mixed up! I could not define it in terms of enjoyment as there have been many times when I enjoyed myself being at work and at play.

An incident with the children helped me understand this distinction differently.

While creating an animation of the Earth going around the Sun in an ellipse (with the Moon rotating around the Earth) the children had use the computer to create the solution for ellipse equation they got from geogebra. It was all done and they had created the following animation. 
(If you are having trouble viewing animations please update your flash player).

Here is a short clip of the part where children noticed that the earth was rushing past at the top extreme in the program that they had created.




I had felt that being able to solve a complex algebraic equation was enough of a challenge and the children had already spent a week on this project and would want to move on, but the glitch really bothered the children, they were unsatisfied with what they had created. This created an opportunity for conversation about slopes and how things were changing differently when solving in one part of the curve, but faster in the other part of the curve. That we needed to compensate with more points where things were changing faster. It took another three days till the children were happy with their work and it looked like the one below:



On reflecting on the incident I learnt that its play when you do something that you don't have to. Of course this definition seems obvious when you are at 'play'. But, it applies equally to 'work'. The moments where I felt I had done something special were the moments when I did what I had to, but pondered over it and did something more. There were already solutions and I didn't have to do more, but I made work play and kept going. 

It helped me connect to the idea of the next right answer, the pursuit of excellence in getting an answer and continuing to look makes work play.

What a world we would create if all our children could make their work into play.

Copy-Paste (the hard way)...

The children had been thrilled with being able to animate the moon going round the earth and wanted to show the solar system with the earth going round the sun. 

Thanks to Arham I had recently seen a video called Earth's motion around the Sun that indicated some of the complexity from the simplistic info that children had:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82p-DYgGFjI

We looked at it and the children felt that it would be interesting to get an object to move in an elliptical path and replicate the earth going round the sun.



The circle was more or less straight forward with moving and turning in each step, but an ellipse...I talked to them of using Geogebra to draw the curve they wanted e.g. an ellipse and then "copy-pasting" it in scratch. Of course the issue was not drawing a shape, but to get an object to travel along the curve so it needed to be true to the curve.

I started with a simple case if x+3 = 5, we went over the story and I reminded them that the answer was not important, it was a trivial case and we were trying to get a method that would help the computer do a repeated simple task till it reached a condition. Also to have a simple condition we changed this to the expression x+3-5 and substituted values of x from -3 to 3 to find when the value of the expression goes to zero giving us the correct x.

We then attempted to solve 2x+3=6 i.e. 2x+3-6 and check when it becomes 0. But, it did the following:
For x=-3-->-9 ; x=-2-->-7 ; x=-1-->-5 ; x=0-->-3; x=1-->-1;  
      x =2-->1  ; x=3-->3    ; x=4-->5    ;x=5-->7 ; basically missing 0. What would then be the way of capturing where the answer lies. The idea that came to the children was that the result of the expression changes direction. Naturally, the last result will need to be remembered, but how do we check if something has changed direction. 
I asked them what they had learnt from integers that might help them do so crisply.They could not quite figure out how to go about it and when they couldn't quite connect after struggle I guided them into the product of integers and checking if the result it positive or negative. Of course here we get the closest integer number, but if the equation is large even though we don't have the decimal parts the curve looks good enough.

We then moved to a real equation x+y=3 and for each value of y we swept x...Once it worked for a line we just moved to the curve and only needed to handle the boundary conditions. 
    

Where is the moon now?

One interesting conversation I had recently was asking the children where they expect the moon to be. When we talk about how disruptive technology can be an app line startracker that shows the position of the moon 'right now' gets into a lot of how children think.

From the first answer in the sky to where in the sky then conversations on what happens during the day and night. I asked the same question over time to different children and with the changing position of the moon it enlightned different aspects of learning. Here are some of them:

1) In an initial thought most children thought the moon rises and falls consistently at more of less the same time. So it should be the other side of the earth. But on looking for the moon it was noticed in a very unexpected place. 

We then decided to for the moon and record where we see it and the time we saw it. That was a week before the new moon and a lot of children came back with there was no moon this week, but some others noticed that they saw it in the morning. We talked about sometimes seeing moon even after sunrise and sometimes even before sunset. What this all this mean?

2) Drawing the expected position of the moon and trying to represent meaningful information of a 3 Dsetting in 2D that led to frame of reference direction and directions. This led to discussions of which plane we can draw aka where does the moon rise and set. It was interesting that there was a child in each class who through that once the sun sets in the west the moon rises from the west.

3) While most children disagreed to the above they could not give any convincing argument to their peer other than that's the way it is.
There was some discussion of how the moon rises and sets. We have been talking about differentiating science from information i.e. being able to understand a phenomenon so we can use our understanding to explain another phenomenon.
One of them was understanding the revolution of the earth which explained both the sun and the moon rising from the east.

4) The children got some clue of which of their classmates were conveying useful information regarding their sightings and which were just making stuff up :).

5) Discussions on fractions! Based on where the moon we talked about where the moon would have been (w.r.to earth) 12 hrs before 6 hrs before and then the more open ended question of when would the moonrise have been. I say open-ended because it brought up the question of at what degree do we consider it moonrise and what the present angle is...

6) It brought up interest on how to create an animated model of the moon around earth, in fact about the moon and earth around Sun.

7) And then the question, how does the camera see that far in the sky :). 
I moved the discussion to possible ways of doing it including a three axis accelerometer that helps is determine where we are looking + gps + the star map + calculation of the moon and planet movements and how that was a cool way to use math. The children immediately got the wiff that I have switched from anna mode to 'teacher' mode and they started to loose interest. One of them even remarked that then we can't see the man-made satellites. 

I learnt my lesson and decided to keep my agenda of teaching something aside to avoid messing up with their learning. When asked this question the second time by another set of kids  just stuck with, 'no clue, but isn't it cool!'

Hmm...upgrades...

When you get around to doing something the second time...there is always something new that happens to keep things interesting.

Last year I had worked with some 7th graders on integer subtraction by making something move from its current position to a target position. Here is a note on the same

"Children initially tend to understand negative numbers in integers as a loan. However, even a simple situation like 5-(-5)=5+5=10 becomes hard to comprehend. A number line is a better visualization for introducing negative numbers. This happens implicitly when using Scratch as it incorporates the Cartesian coordinate system. A character (sprite) when placed at (0,0) is at the center of the display. Changing x with a positive number takes it to the right correspondingly changing x with a negative number takes it to the left.

As children use a change x function they get a handle of the integers. In time they get curious and check what happens with change y with integers to get a sense of the Cartesian system.

As the children felt more confident they created a simple game with integers: the user needs to give the number to add to take a character from a start location to a target location. Though initially the children put numbers and situations they already knew e.g. two positive numbers start:5, target:10, to add:(10-5)=5. The program would then move from the start to start+to add and check that the result is the target. Once the children are comfortable enough to randomize one and then both the starting point and destination, all possibilities of subtraction scenarios arise e.g. start:10, target:5, to add:(5-10)=-5. They also clearly see the need to move left to get to the target. Similarly, start:-5 target:5 to add:5-(-5)=10 also makes sense as the target is to the right of the object."

The emphasis last time was a bit on programming and getting the strings and numbers to match up well. 

But this time the children were implicitly unconvinced about the motivation of the character (in one case) the crab to move. The crab must have had a reason to have a target, right. So they came up with their reasons. The crab was tired and wanted to sit on a rock!

There were other stories of a diver catching a fish, of a cat catching a mouse, someone looking for a key, etc). The character was at the current location and there was a visible target that the children could see is behind or ahead of the character. This helped them re-look at the result they got to see if it made sense i.e. positive number means the rock should be in ahead and a negative result is a rock behind me.

Questions of children

I started a science class once a week with young children in Udavi.

I asked him what science was and the quick answer was experiments, then a study of living beings. I explored if they could tell a living being from a non-living being by creating a rule that we could apply. The children came up with various aspects they could think of it moves (you mean like a fan or car?),  it talks (like a tree?), soon the children got the hang of what was going on a conversation got going where a child would propose a rule and anyone who disagreed would come up with an example of why they disagree that the rule is always valid.

They made a table
Rule for Living and non-living:
Rule              Example(s) of Agreement     Example(s) of disagreement
Breathing      Humans, dogs                         Do plants breath?

It was interesting that even through children said living things - they first associated it with humans, then with animals, then plants and then non-living things....
It also took them some time to think in terms of examples of agreement of disagreement. Some of the children initially wrote living things in the first column and non-living things in the second column which were  in agreement with the hypothesis. It appears more tempting to classify than to see if it is relevant to a rule...

We then moved to questions they had, do plants breath. What is breathing? If its taking oxygen and giving out carbon-di-oxide (like a fire?) then its one answer and if its taking in air its another. This led us to doubts and questions children had and how as humans we are prone to have doubts and are willing to put an effort in resolving these doubts, perhaps, that is what science is. I wanted to hear from each child so we started talking about doubts that children had about the world, here are some of them:
- How can you tell if a fish is male or female?
- Where does an electric eel get its electricity from?
- Why do birds fly and not humans?
- How exactly do gills help fish get oxygen?
- Why do plants use carbon-di-oxide and give oxygen and why do humans do the opposite?
... and then it exploded, everyone had something to ask and add.

I suggested that we make one large list of all of them and go through them. Looks like a nice curriculum for that class to me.

I also noticed there were many fish questions, I wondered if it was natural or because the new building has a pond within it.