A couple of days ago, we met up with folks from Persistent Systems Ltd, a renowned technology company in Pune. They were interested to start training school children to program, and to build their logic. This initiative was part of the Persistent Foundation, a non-profit wing of Persistent Systems Ltd.
They wanted to try out a pilot, by training the children in Scratch, and of course, we volunteered. The question was which class was to be chosen. They were planning to start a pilot in another school, for Std. 6 children. We suggested them to start with older children of Std. 9, so that they get an idea of both the age groups. So, a lesson plan was formulated, and would you guess who the teachers of the Scratch program were? Our very own parents who work at Persistent Systems! Isnt that great? We thought if there was enough interest from parents at Persistent, then they could take turns, and that way, it wouldnt be a burden on them (we found out that all of our parents working at Persistent were highly enthusiastic!).
The parents started coming to teach students of Std. 9 from 14th December, for two days a week. So far, the response has been super-enthusiastic from both the sides the students love it, and so do the parents! The parents were surprised to find out that many of the children of Std. 9 already knew about the Scratch IDE, and how to work around with it. This was because our labs run Ubuntu Linux, and the Scratch IDE, along with examples was already installed on them. In their spare time, after using myEshala, many of them played around with Scratch. We have uploaded some videos, and are digitizing the hands-on lectures. This will help making this activity sustainable in our school, as well as can be used by anybody else to train their child or children in Scratch.
We firmly believe programming is a great way to develop logic in children. It also helps them identify a problem, and seek out a solution step by step. This is one of the most critical things that anyone requires in their adult life solving problems! Every profession has its share of problems, and how successful anyone is depends entirely on how well he or she can solve those problems. We also believe that knowing programming and being tech-savvy is only going to help everyone (take our own example!) In fact, when you ask Dr. Phatak what his PhD in Solid State Physics taught him the most, he says it is how to think differently and solve problems!
