Outreach programmes

Hoskote town students work with IBM volunteers to make Lego Robots navigate a maze!

IBM revisited Hoskote with a second science workshop on Feb 3, 2007, this time focusing on the Lego Robotics kit. This was a follow through of the first event held in November as part of IBM’s Technology Education Outreach (TEO) programme. The programme was driven by an enthusiastic team of IBM and Computer Society of India (CSI) volunteers led by H R Shiva Kumar, WAS-CE & Apache Geronimo Developer, India Software Labs. Prior to the event, the volunteers were trained on assembling and programming the Lego Robotics kit, using the resources available on IBM’s On Demand Community website.

The team (Shiva Kumar, Anil K Kainikara, Nandan L Reddy, Anoop Ramachanchra, Prashanth S Kaggali, Shweta Sinha, Radhika Gadde, Manu Gupta, Apeksha Bhatt, Swetha Meenakshi, Jalaja Pillai from IBM and Seetharamu, Balasubba Raman Guruswamy and Ashwin from CSI) started out early Saturday morning with the Lego Robotic kits, prizes and palpable energy and enthusiasm! The event was hosted by Sri Vivekananda Vidya Kendra school, one of the most prominent schools in Hoskote town, located 25 kms away from Bangalore, Karnataka.

The IBM and CSI teams were received by the secretary (chief administrator) and teachers of the host school. Over 50 students from 7 schools participated in the programme. The programme began around 9 am with a presentation of some very interesting projects, which emerged from the previous workshop. Radio, Dynamo, Elevator, Traffic Lights, Converting Solar Energy into Electrical, Projector, Post Letter Alarm, Electric Buzzer, etc were some of the awesome projects done by students. The visiting team had a tough time deciding on an exciting initiative on a transistor radio, as the winning presentation among many worthy contenders!

For the Lego Robotics workshop, the students were grouped into 10 teams named after well known scientists - Aryabhatta, Bhabha, Chandra, Curie, Edison, Einstein, Newton, Pascal, Raman, and Watson. Each team was assigned a science teacher and a volunteer for support. The Lego workshop started with a demo and some basic training on the Lego Robotic kits, led by Shiva. After a very exciting hour & a half of learning, the teams broke for lunch to prepare themselves for the challenging afternoon ahead.

The post-lunch project involved programming the robot to make its way through a maze to pick up a can of toxic waste and dispose it. This involved multiple steps the robot needed to take, to move forward, sideways, turn, or wait. The excitement among the students was infectious, and the volunteers had to be reminded repeatedly that their role was to support and not compete in the contest! The workshop was marked with its energy and buzz of activity, with all teams trying their robot movements on the maze! The robots, of course, also had a mind of their own, and added to the chaos and excitement (or was that a glitch in the programming?!)

A new maze had to be created to arrive at the final decision on the winning teams, because of the excellent work the teams put in. The Faraday team, supported by Apeksha won the first prize by a very thin margin, but all the teams felt like winners! In the closing ceremony, all students received their mementoes and the winning teams were given prizes.

It was a charged and exciting session, and the most heartening part was the intelligence, interest and team work of the students. It was also a unique experience, and a rare one, for the students and the teachers. For the volunteers it was a complete change from the daily routine - adding new dimensions to their experiences! No one can wait for the next such opportunity - students, teachers, and volunteers alike. And IBM left with a promise to be back with more!

IBM Celebrates Engineers week!

As a part of Engineers week (Feb 18-24 2007) and "Introducing a Girl to Engineering" day on 22 Feb 2007, IBM organized a Technology Education Outreach (TEO) programme in collaboration with Bangalore Association for Science Education at the Bangalore Planetarium on 22 Feb 2007 with an objective of inspiring middle-school girls to appreciate career opportunities in technology fields. 51 girl students from 9 schools, along with their science teachers, participated in this workshop. The participating schools were CarmelSchool Padmanabhanagar, Sri Vani Education Centre Rajajinagar, Sri Vani Education Centre Basaveshwaranagar,Stella Maris High School Vyalikaval, Kadambi High School Rajajinagar, Gangamma Hombegowda Girls High School Wilson Garden, Kendriya Vidyalaya Hebbal, VVS Sardar Patel High School Rajajinagar, R V Girls High School, Jayanagar.

The theme for the TEO programme was Optics. The programme was designed by the Bangalore Association for Science Education and conducted with support from IBM volunteers Sreelatha Sankaranarayanan, T Pushpa, Shailendra Kumar, Ashutosh Dhanesha and Jalaja Pillai. The programme was led by Mr.H.R.Madhusudan of Bangalore Association for Science Education.The first session comprised of an experiment-based discussion on the behaviour of light, lenses and mirrors - concepts like rectilinear propagation of light, image formation by mirrors and lenses were discussed.

The second session was related to the functioning of telescopes. The functioning of reflector and refractor telescopes was discussed. This session was moderated by Dr B S Shylaja ofBangalore Association for Science Education. There was also a session on how a telescope works with a live demonstration.

The third session comprised activities by the students. First, a discussion on ′Anamorphic Art′ was followed by construction of cylindrical mirrors. Students were then asked to draw distorted pictures that would appear ’properly’ in their reflection by the cylindrical mirror.

The next activity was constructing a CD spectroscope. Using very rudimentary things like a blade, a piece of compact Disc and a flat cardboard box, students constructed a spectroscope and observed the spectra of light from different sources.The session was charged with a lot of excitement and one could see lots of mirrors and spectroscopes all around with the students trying to get the angles right! IBMer T Pushpa spoke to the students about careers on technology for women. When a question was asked about how many of them were keen on a career in science and technology, all the hands went up!

The session closed with an address by Bangalore Association for Science Education and distribution of certificates and giveaways.The giveaways also included an optics kit comprising LASER pointer, lenses and mirrors to carry out further investigations of the principles during the workshop. The students were then invited for a show at the Planetarium by Bangalore Association for Science Education.

Science Engineering Workshop at Hyderabad - A TEO initiative

As part of the IBM Technology Education Outreach (TEO) program, an initiative from University Relations, volunteers from IBM, Hyderabad joined hands on March 15, 2007 to conduct a "Science & Engineering Workshop" targeted at Government school students in partnership with Byrraju Foundation.

The Workshop was conducted at Jeedimetla High School, in the Jeedimetla village, 16 km from Hyderabad.

The programme was driven by a team of 12 IBM volunteers, headed by Arni Manoj, who have been consistently working towards the improvement of rural school education.

45 students from 6 different schools were divided into groups named after prominent Indian scientists - APJ ABDUL KALAM, CV RAMAN, ARYABHATA, HOMI J BHABHA, And J C BOSE. To encourage participation, collaboration and team work, the teams were formed by bringing together students from different classes and different schools.

One of the volunteers asked the participants if the experiments in their lessons been demonstrated to them earlier, or if they had tried by themselves. Very few hands went up as a response, a single digit count!

And when asked, "How many of you want to see and do the experiments?" the response was a unanimous yes. Enthusiasm filled the air. Two major experiments Newton's Laws, Electricity and two minor experiments Surface Tension, Turbidity along with optional experiments (Static Electricity, Litmus test, Metal Expansion etc.,) and many models like Dynamo Model, Newtons Color Disc, Ripple Tank, Wave Machine etc. were demonstrated.

The presentation was followed by hands-on session by the participants and they were asked to document their findings as well as observations. Following the workshop, a Science Quiz was conducted and the winning team was awarded with "Children's Knowledge Bank" books and a book on "Know about Physics" was presented to each school for library reference.

Finally the Best Performing Team was judged and awarded by IBM volunteers based on many parameters like team work, enthusiasm, grasping power etc.

The awards and participation certificates along with the giveaways were presented to all participants by Arni Manoj and Suresh Reddy (Byrraju Foundation).

As testimony of a good job done, the feedback had many requests from the teachers to conduct similar experiments at their respective schools. The teachers sought help in many areas including assisting in technology setup, science presentations, etc.

The students had a novel experience leagues apart from their regular activities, when they collaborated with peers from different schools and participated in the workshop.

The team of IBM volunteers that made the workshop a success are Naveen K Prathapaneni, Manthena Suni Somaraju, Vijay P Pothuluru, Jeevan A Rego, Gopikrishna Pendekanti, Sangameswar, Aruna Karanam, Parimala Va Joseph, Deepa Kancharla, Archana Va, Rohan Aravindrao and Raghavendra.