Apne Haath Se                           eAkshar

Objectives

Our group “Apne Haath Se” of Media Lab Asia is working on educational methods well suited for village environment. Commercialization and competitiveness are making middle-class children go for rote learning without understanding. Worse, the poor kids, specially from villages, drop out. We want to reverse the trend by inventing new experiment and activity based educational techniques. Computer is a powerful medium for learning. We work with children, teachers, and youth, and help them use computers as an educational tool.

Current Activities

We have made workshop modules human body containing digital tools (computer animations and games), paper model and plastic models, and physical games. So far we have covered human digestive, respiratory, and circulatory systems. Work on skeleton and muscular system is going on.

We have made visual and model aids to explain day-night, seasons, and eclipses.

We have designed workshops on three themes: a) Human digestive system, b) Human respiratory and circulatory system c) Day-night, Seasons, and Eclipses. Workshop module on Skeleton and Muscular system is being designed.

We held many workshops in village schools for approximately thirty children. The children made plastic models themselves using tubes, bottles etc. They also played a computer game on assembling the digestive system. (Workshops: 7 on theme a, 3 on theme c, 1 one theme b).

We have prepared a booklet on human digestive system in Hindi. We are making 4 books on four modules we are covering (both in Hindi and English). These books are self-explanatory, and can be used by teachers to conduct workshops themselves.

Computer games on Indian Geography, and wave-motion using Java and OpenGL have been prepared. We are preparing a general methodology to write computer games using Java.

Software on three dimensional structure of a given molecule is ready.

In the summer we are planning to make a virtual tour guide of a city.

We are planning to hold a week long workshop for teachers. Set of workshops for Chhatishgarh schools are also planned for July.
 

Project Investigator