Jigyasa Science Camp 2012

This document contains a report of a 5-day long science camp for students of Dantewada conducted

in Pune during 18th – 22nd December 2012.

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Table of Contents Summary ....................................................................................................................................................... 2

Camp Schedule.............................................................................................................................................. 5

Day 1: Inaugural Day at IISER ........................................................................................................................ 7

Day 2: Biodiversity Field Trip at Sinhgad ....................................................................................................... 8

Day 3: Visit to IUCAA ................................................................................................................................... 10

Day 4: Visit to Vigyan Ashram, Pabal .......................................................................................................... 11

Day 5: Day at Jnana Prabodhini Science Labs ............................................................................................. 13

Day 6 ........................................................................................................................................................... 14

Appendix ..................................................................................................................................................... 15

Budget Utilization ................................................................................................................................... 15

Feedback form for participants .................................................................................................................. 16

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Summary

Jigyasa was a 5-day long science camp for students of Dantewada, Chhattisgarh as a part of educational activities of the program ‘Bachpan Banao’. ‘Bachpan Banao’ is a program that is

being implemented at Dantewada to support educational efforts of district administration of Dantewada, in the highly underdeveloped and tribal area of India. It was conducted in Pune during 18th – 22nd December 2012. This science camp was organized by Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune - as proposed by Bachpan Banao – and hosted-supported by Jnana Prabodhini Pune. Disha - a voluntary organization of IISER students was closely involved in coordinating this camp.

Objective of the camp was to give students exposure to what they lack in Dantewada and to get them excited about science and education. The idea was to give them flavor of various exciting fields in science. Keeping this into consideration, more emphasis was on hand-on-activities and exposure visits. We

also wanted the students to start developing scientific attitude and start appreciating the methodology of science. Therefore, rather than presenting direct answers to their questions, we encouraged and guided them to understand scientific method of finding answers.

53 students from 28 schools across the district of Dantewada that participated in Jigyasa Science Camp would remember this experience for their lifetime. They are more excited and inspired about science and further education after their participation in the camp.

We scheduled many informal sessions with volunteers, so that students feel at ease in Pune and also get their doubts cleared time to time.

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It was evident on the last day that students thoroughly enjoyed the camp and had a lot of stuff with them in their minds to carry back home. Many of them wanted to share their experiences with other students in their schools who did not attend the camp. We encouraged the participants to share the stuff that they learnt here with their friends and younger students back home.

It is also planned to have postal communication with the participating students in order to help them start some of these activities at their schools.

Each day would start at 5-15 am when the students and volunteers would gather to say the prayers, followed by exercises in the form of Suryanamaskar! The students would be ready before the breakfast at 7 -30 am.

[Written by – Kaustubh Deshpande, Sugat Dabholkar]

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Organizing the camp

For any event the most important aspect is organization.

There was a core team of 5 members who were the organizers of the camp. Each was assigned the responsibility of activities of one day. Other categories of tasks were- Overall planning of the camp, deciding content and sessions, volunteers’ management. The members of the core team were

Kalyani Katariya

Mihir Umrani

Aditya Ponkshe

Kaustubh Deshpande

Sugat Dabholkar

Students from different college and schools were asked to fill up the application forms to be a part of the Volunteers team of the jigyasa camp. 10 Full time Volunteers were finalized from the applicants. Orientation session for the volunteers was planned to brief them about the overall camp structure.

Full-time volunteers were going to stay with students for all the 5 days. Their main responsibility was to identify the students’ concerns and the areas where they were lagging, having questions, not able to connect to the sessions, build the rapport with students. There were around 20 part-time volunteers as well, who pitched in time-to-time to help with various responsibilities. Different logistical responsibilities like transport, accommodation, account management, food Material hospital and venue management were assigned to full-time volunteers.

On the first day students were divided into 5 different groups based on game. We assigned two full time volunteers to each group. Some responsibilities were also given to the students. Responsibilities like food, cleanliness, time management and health. Each group was going to having 2 group leaders.

Each day follow up meeting was scheduled for the volunteers in the night to discuss the overview of the day, problem encountered during the day and instructions for the next day. It was followed by a meeting of organizers to take stock of the situation.

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Camp Schedule

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Day 1: Inaugural Day at IISER

The inaugural day of Jigyasa science camp was at the main organizing institute, IISER Pune. It started off with formal inauguration function at the hands of Prof. K.N. Ganesh (Director, IISER Pune), Vivek Ponkshe (Educational secretary, Jnana Prabodhini), Neeraj Bansod (CEO-IAS, Dantewada) and Dr. Yogesh

Kulkarni (Director, Vigyan Ashram). All inauguration invitees addressed the students, each one with different flavor. Prof. Ganesh mentioned about what it means by research and why is the study of science essential. Vivek Ponkshe sir provided excellent and inspirational guidance to the students, through their experiences, about the attitude one should have while learning and giving back to the society. Neeraj Bansod shared his experiences during school/college days and mentioned importance of such exposure camps. Dr. Yogesh Kulkarni talked about importance of “Learning while doing” and aroused curiosity among the students about Vigyan Ashram visit planned

on fourth day of the camp. The inauguration function ended with felicitation of all supporters (IISER, Jnana Prabodhini, Vigyan Ashram, Disha) of Jigyasa science camp by District administration and Bachpan Banao.

The first session of the camp was conducted by Dr. Anirban Hazra (ahazra@iiserpune.ac.in). It was a demonstrative and interactive session titled as “Chemistry in daily life”. During this 2.5 hours session, he started with importance of observation of patterns in the nature in the study of science and then went to show some simple Chemistry experiments. Shubham Agnihotri and Aditya Hardikar, students of 11th standard and working in Vijnan dal, (who were also full time volunteers for the camp) assisted Dr. Hazra during preparation and also demonstration of these experiments. The experiments included acid-base identification using natural indicator (red cabbage), osmosis in cavity made in potato, making of ice-cream from milk using liquid nitrogen etc. Along with demonstration, Dr. Hazra

also encouraged scientific thought process among the students. All students (and certainly volunteers!) thoroughly enjoyed the session (particularly due to the ice-cream everyone got to eat in the end!). It was indeed a fitting inaugural session of the camp.

After having a nice lunch (Pavbhaji, Biryani and ice-cream) at IISER mess, students were ready for the next attraction, aeroplane making session. Even volunteers along with all the students were waiting for this session. It was a 4-hour workshop conducted by Mr. Sadanand Kale, who is Satara based aeromodeller

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(littlewingsindia@gmail.com). Everyone was curious when he distributed the material (thermocol cuttings etc.) as to how exactly the aeroplane looks like when ready. He then showed some ready models, how they fly and also explained quite extensively the theory behind the flight of an aeroplane. Although not a lot of students might have understood it in full, for those who did (and earned a kit for larger model from Mr. Kale!) it would have been really great to see it in practice when they made the models themselves. Everyone then made two models, one with only thermocol and the other with a propeller using rubber band. Both models had their own beauty and even volunteers could not resist seeing how the aeroplanes made by themselves fly, even when they were not completely ready! Finally when everyone was done with these two models, Mr. Kale and his colleagues took everyone to IISER ground for demonstration of remote operated aeroplanes. Now this was extremely interesting and quite a lot of crowd gathered around the ground (including IISER students, housekeeping and security people at IISER and also construction site workers). It was purely amazing to see the aeroplanes fly, all in different styles, speed and height. A colleague of Mr. Kale then explained how he developed aeromodelling as a hobby after learning the basics in his school days from Mr. Kale. All kids were surely amused looking at these models closely and asking questions about them. It was indeed a great experience for all those who attended the workshop.

After such a wonderful first day of the camp children were all eager to know what was planned on successive days in the camp. Slightly tired but still enjoying the time with antakshari in the bus, everyone reached back to Jnana Prabodhini. The full time volunteers had informal interaction with the students before everyone went to sleep, curious (and organizers slightly anxious) about the day 2.

[Written by Kaustubh Deshpande]

Day 2: Biodiversity Field Trip at Sinhgad

On second day, we spent the morning in Sinhgad valley as a biodiversity field visit. The next half of the day was again divided in two sessions- observation exercises in IISER biology undergraduate lab and an interactive lecture on Ornithology by Dr. SatishPande.

Main theme of the day was to give the students an exposure to practical aspects of biology. The program was designed to make students feel that the nature and surrounding are not much far from textbook biological sciences.We tried to experience how an observation, a crucial part of scientific process, can lead to interesting questions.

Alongwith our Bhaiyyas and didis, biodiversity students from Garware College joined our team to guide us through the valley and help us explore the jungle with a bit more scientific view. All the students were divided in 8 groups with biodiversity student and one full/part time volunteer for each group.

The field-trip had three main objectives:

Making careful observations in nature (closing the eyes and observing sounds)

Collecting interesting samples to look under the microscope

Trying to find the rules we can observe in nature

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The trip was a great experience for the kids as they enjoyed roaming around and getting their answers from our biodiversity experts. The volunteer made a point not to just feed the information but to encourage the students to enquire about the irregularities or things they found interesting.

For example, instead of asking the real names of plants or birds, we tried to name them in our own ways. The sound observation exercise was a novel experience for the kids. They tried to identify as many sounds as they could and then classified them on various bases such as natural against man made, distantness of sound, and frequency of the sounds which in turn initiated many questions about nature. We collected many interesting samples on the way such as old wrinkled leaves, flowers with colorful pollens, a caterpillar, hairy fruits and much more! As a last exercise of finding the rules in nature, the volunteers encouraged the kids to observe the surroundings to see any correlations. With the guidance from the volunteers, kids came up with very interesting rules. For example, they found that some spiders with tunnel shaped webs come out in the sunlight or the flowers with petals have at least two colors.

Just after the noon, we had our lunch, then said goodbye to helpful biodiversity volunteers and headed for IISER undergraduate biology lab. We planned to observe water samples and other interesting objects from sinhgad valley in compound microscopes. Ashwini, a teaching assistant in IISER, explained the students how to use the microscopes and what might we observe in our samples. Everyone was told to observe and describe anything they would see under the microscope. One could tell that the most fascinating part the kids felt was to look tiny organisms moving around in the drop of water. Students drew several pictures of microorganisms or the detailed shapes or forms of pollens or the insect body parts or leaf cells. After this exciting session we headed back to our base camp in Jnana Prabodhini waiting for the talk by Dr. Satish Pande, a renowned ornithologist.

The talk by Dr. Pande was about birds in Chattisgarh. In the talk, he explored the beautiful lives of birds, their striking features. He also explained how to study birds and reasons to study birds. Though being informative, the talk turned out to be a great fun for students as they got encouraged by Dr. Pande to participate and make the talk more interactive. He related the content to their daily lives and explaining the interesting association of various known and unknown birds in our religion, history and even our postal stamps. So, the talk thoroughly served the purpose of getting student excited about biological

sciences.

The day didn’t just end there. After dinner, we gathered once again to share the experiences. Students from each group talked about the things they observed for the first time and most favorite part/session of the day.

[Written by – Mihir Umrani]

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Day 3: Visit to IUCAA

The students spent most part of the third day at IUCAA (Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics). They day was divided into two part, the first part was Arvind Gupta’s session on Scientific ‘toys from trash’. The second part, after lunch, included a talk on astronomy, by Dr. Prakash Tupe, visit to the science part at IUCAA and an informal session at night on the terrace with telescope by Mayuresh Prabhune.

During the day, we wanted to give the students flavor of physics and astronomy. Visit to IUCAA, itself was an important exposure visit to inspire students. But, more than that, to bridge the gap between science and their daily life, by taking them close to the world of mechanics through Arvind Gupta’s toys was important. Students of that age are always fascinated with astronomy. To cater to that curiosity and further strengthen their interest and aspiration to learn science, the further sessions were planned.

The whole world of toys that Arvind Gupta has developed for students to get excited about science is incredible! (Do visit: www.arvindguptatoys.com) The sheer enthusiasm and energy with which he talks to kids, inspires all the spectators. The session was amazing. The students just loved it. These students had already participated at the science camp in Dantewada, where we had discussed science behind some of the toys. Students did remember those. Still, there is so much variety in the toys, that there was so much new stuff and something exciting for each student.

Students took lunch in their groups with the Bhaiyyas (volunteers) in the IUCAA science park itself and soon after the lunch they started exploring and playing the science part.

Post lunch sessions are generally challenging. Even though, it was difficult for him to communicate in Hindi, Dr. Tupe made his session quite interesting. Starting from how world looks at various scales, he took students to journey of solar system. He talked about astronauts and their lives, through inspirational examples of Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams. Sugat Bahaiya helped the students with Hindi translation.

The Bhaiyyas, then took the students to tour of the science park, explaining them the science behind the exhibits. The students asked a lot of questions, tried various stuff themselves and thoroughly enjoyed their time in the science part. Thus ended the IUCAA visit!

In the evening, we took students to play on the ground with Jnana Prabodhini students of their age. The students were divided into teams and they played football and Kabaddi matches against the Pune students. Playing in teams, united the students even more, pumped more adrenalin and this session recharged their batteries!

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After dinner, Mayuresh conducted a brief session on 21st Dec, 2012 myth and then took the kids to terrace for star gazing. He had arranged a telescope to show them, spots on moon and planets of Jupiter. Students eagerly awaited in the lines to observe the planets and were very excited after using the telescope.

It was a very eventful day for the students and they enjoyed every bit of it!

[Written by – Sugat Dabholkar]

Day 4: Visit to Vigyan Ashram, Pabal

For next day Pabal Vigyan Ashram visit co-ordinators were Mihir, Nana and me. The Pabal visit was planned nearly one month prior to the camp. The main intention for Pabal Vigyan Asram visit was that students should get exposure of science and entrepreneurship. To mention the vision in the very words of Late Dr. Kalbag - the founder of Vigyan Ashram - “My vision is that every village will have the equipment and the skills that are the basis of all modern industry. My industry, my invention will achieve this at a very low cost. My vision is that one day I will see this invention spread all over India in all the schools.”

Yesterday it was quite busy day for students due to - IUCAA visit, kabbadi and football matches and late night sky gazing!

We had meeting with volunteers late night after sky gazing. We gave them handouts about project they will be working on tomorrow with students and told about their role in tomorrow’s session. We kept the same groups of student as we made during Sinhgad valley visit. Two volunteers per group were assigned. The day started with daily prayer and exercise. I gave the students brief idea about Vgyan Ashram.We

reached Vigyan Ashram at around 9:15. Baniet sir (Vigyan Ashram program coordinator) was waiting for us with his welcoming smile!

Students had their breakfast. Then in one classroom Omkar sir and Anand sir addressed the students. They gave them brief overview of the projects the students will be working on. One by one they assigned minimum two projects for each group. Students were taken to their respective labs and classes with their tai dada(volunteers).

They projects were divided in four main categories :

1.Home and Health :-

Low fat coconut and peanuts chikki making, perfume making, jelly making, Blood and hemoglobin checking

2. Agriculture :- Azola production, seedling plantation, measuring an animal’s age by counting its teeth, measuring animal body temperature etc.

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3. Energy and Environment :Solar cooking, preparing LED torch

4. Engineering :-

Photo lamination, screen printing

Nana joined one group of students. Mihir and myself took a round to take overlook of all projects and took some snaps.

Solar cooking group was eager to cook food and they were gathering all the information related to solar cookers and its working. Sneha and Anup (volunteers) were helping them to understand the science behind it. They were going to cook a ‘Khichdi ‘ and more on that students wanted to prepare Maggie!!

Other groups were going to prepare the perfume! Inamdar Sir told them the ingredients, amount of chemicals and procedure of perfume making. Not just that but also how attractive packaging is also important in market. And during our last round we also saw Durga, Yogita and the group were calculating the price of perfume they prepared. They prepared perfume for all students very enthusiastically with the help of sir and their dada - Shubham and Pranav! The same group later prepared Kavath jelly.Another group was learning about hemoglobin and blood group testing. They were going to test the blood groups of all the students.

Me and Mihir entered in the LED torch preparing workshop. Pawan sir was explaining them the components required to prepare the torch and some electronics concept.

Mukund and Diksha‘s group worked on agriculture related small projects like Azola production, seedling plantation, measuring animal’s age by counting their teeth, measuring animal temperature etc. All students prepared their own photo frames and screen printed their bags.

Since morning I was quite busy looking after the students’ projects so I could not get the time to talk to Amma - wife of Dr Kalbagh.. After lunch I got an opportunity to talk with her. She showed me a wonderful toy gifted to her by a villager. It was a wooden made woodpecker. Its finishing was really nice. While showing the toy to me her face was full of pride about the villager who made it She told me that students really enjoy learning while doing and shared some of her experiences.

After lunch they finished their remaining things in their projects. Omkar sir gathered all the students for sharing their whole day

experience and to listen to experiences of other students. Chakradhar - one of the students - started sharing his experience about LED torch making and a torch wire came out from socket. So all students sighed but he told them - ”Now don’t worry, I can prepare the torch again!” Many other students shared their experiences.

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Now it was time to visit for polyhouse which was 5 kms away from Vigyan Ashram. In polyhouse the two flower plants were cultivated. One was a gerbera and the other was rose. Students gathered information about how these plants are cultivated, how temperature is maintained, the water dripping system and the market value about rose and gerbera plant.

The next was a dairy where the owner of dairy - explained them how milk is processed in dairy. After that we meet One of the student who learnt in Pabal Ashram started his own business of making tractors. So it was quite interesting to meet him.

The whole day students were busy and engaged. Now it was time to get relax for while! We had a tea in garden. It was already too late for us to leave from Pabal so we packed up earlier. We reached Probodhini by 8:30.

Next day morning I had small session with students about Pabal visit.

I wanted to know some of the answers from student. Like what they think about the purpose of the yesterday’s(Pabal Ashram) visit. What science did they learn from the yesterday’s different projects and how they are going to use this knowledge.

Students explained the scientific principle behind solar cooking. Nitrogen fixation in azola and its use, and many other things. They also told that they can also start these small business in their own town. Funniest thing was when one student started explaining the blood groups he told us that one is king(O+) and one is beggar(AB +) !

Dr Mayur, one of our volunteers, gave them the analogy of king and beggar to understand the universal donar and acceptor blood group concept.erm but students remember the analogies of it ! Then Sugat and Dr.Mayur explained them why these blood groups are called Universal donor and universal acceptor and made clear to them analogies were given just for their understanding purpose. After the visit I was quite satisfactory as Pabal Ashram visit was very relevant to the students . It was nice experience to see all the courses that are initiated by Pabal Ashram keeping in mind the mantra “Learning by doing!“

Omkar sir and the complete Pabal ashram staff conducted all the projects nicely. Apart from that all volunteers’ contribution was really nice.

Overall it was wonderful day for all of us!

For more information please visit Vigyan Ashram website: www.vigyanashram.com

[Written by – Kalyani Katariya]

Day 5: Day at Jnana Prabodhini Science Labs

This was the last day of camp. Students spent all day in different laboratories of Jnana Prabodhini. The day was divided in two major parts. First part included talk by Prof. Natu sir (IISER, Pune) on ‘Technology inspired from nature’ in which he shared different ideas from nature which has inspired and helped us in solving various problems. He encouraged students

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to look around for ideas which are already there in nature. Another talk by Aditya and Pranav bhaiyaa (volunteers) was based on how we can design our own experiments using very simple tools such as candle.

Students spent later part of day in different laboratories doing various hands on experiments. They tried to learn some concepts by actually doing experimentation in laboratories. For this, all students were divided in three groups and each group performed experiments related to physics, chemistry and biology by rotation. The aim of this part was to bring them closer to concepts by actually doing experiments and also while doing this, to remove fear of laboratory environment and instrument handling. Experiments performed by students included-

Chemistry: Preparation of SO2 gas. Mentor Bhaiyaas: Harshavardhan and Shubham

Biology: Dissection of microscope and observing our own cheek cell under microscope.

Mentor Bhaiyaas: Aditya and Abhijeet

Physics: Study of refraction and lenses. Mentor Bhaiyaas: Pranav and Aditya

Every experiment was first explained and demonstrated by their bhaiyaas (volunteers) then all student performed experiment by their own. The focus of explanation was mainly on the concept they will be learning through respective experiments in very simple language. Many students were experiencing extensive work in lab for the first time and overall it seemed to be very exciting experience for them.

At the end of day a few students shared their experiences during the camp in a small informal closing program. Dr. Rao sir (IISER, Pune) and Dr. Deopurkar sir (Pune University) were chief invitees for the program. Each student amp was felicitated with a certificate for their successful participation in camp. The camp was formally ended on a note by Deopurkar sir where he highlighted importance of education as a whole in his talk with students.

[Written by – Aditya Ponkshe]

Day 6

Though the camp was scheduled for five days, morning of day 6 was spent constructively, as the scheduled departure of the students was on the morning.

A program of Sankalpa Samaroha was conducted in the early morning at 6 – 30 am. In a formal setting, the students were guided about their responsibility to keep the curiosity and inspiration alive within them and carry it with them to spread it back home to other students. All of them took oath publically as well as individually. All the students were really excited and were full of energy during the program.

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Appendix

Budget Utilization

Particulars Allocated

Budget Budget Utilized

Food 50000 46000

Science Books 7500 12000

Science kits 50000 42200

Miscellaneous 50000 28800

Total 157500 129000

The budget was fully provided by IISER, Pune. In addition to this, transport facility and stationary for the participants was also provided by IISER, Pune. Accommodation was provided by Jnana Prabodhini.

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Feedback form for participants

जजज्ञासा जिज्ञान जिबीर आप 18 से 22 जदसम्बर 2012 के दौरान पणुे िहर में आकर जजज्ञासा जिज्ञान जिबीर में जिज्ञान के बारे में

बहुत कुछ सीखे। पर यह जिज्ञान का रास्ता यही खत्म नहीं होता! आप घर पहुुँच गए हो, जिर भी आप

अपनी जिज्ञान के प्रजत जजज्ञासा को बढाते रहना ह।ै आप को अपने दोस्तों को, जो आप के साथ जिबीर में

नहीं थे, उन्हें भी अपनी जजज्ञासा बढाने में मदद करनी ह।ै

आप क्या करने में इच्छुक ह ैयह हमें बताने के जिए नीचे जदए सिािों के जिाब दीजजए। हमें आप को

जिबीर से जाने के बाद जो सिाि मन में आए िो भी बताइए।

1. आप को जिज्ञान जिबीर में सबसे ज्यादा क्या सीखने को जमिा?

2. आप को जिज्ञान जिबीर की कौनसी बात सबसे अच्छी िगी?

3. ऐसी कौनसी बात थी जो आपको पसंद नहीं आई?

4. आप अपनी जिज्ञान के प्रजत जजज्ञासा को और कैसे बढ़ाएंगे?

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5. आप अपने दोस्तों की जजज्ञासा बढाने में उनकी कैसे मदद करेंगे?

6. आप 10 िी कक्षा के बाद क्या करना चाहोगे?

7. आपके संकल्प बताइए,और उन्हें पणूण करने प्रजत अब तक आपने क्या क्या जकया ह ैयह भी बताइए।

8. आपको घर िापस जाने के बाद मन में आए सिाि बताइए।