Science is a part of almost every aspect of our day to day life. From ages, science has been making impossible things possible and thus contributing to the development of human race. Spirit of science can be effectively continued in future generations if children study and appreciate science.
Learning through experiments is regarded as one of the best ways of stimulating a child's curiosity and interest in science. But as part of the current education system, science in school is most of the time taught only through class room lectures, thus killing the joy of studying science. Most of the time children learn principles in science through rote learning and reproduce it as boring facts. As a result of that, we rarely apply scientific principles in our daily lives in spite of studying it and we have a society that lacks scientific temper and awareness that gets easily carried away by superstitions. A pardigm shift is possible only when children consider science as fun and scientific thinking is inculcated right from school-age.
To address this issue Sugathi, Free Software Movement Karnataka (FSMK) and Bharath Gyan Vigyan Samiti (BGVS) jointly organized a state level science workshop in Bangalore on April 21st and April 22nd 2012 to train master resource persons in science related activities. Idea is to involve the resource persons trained in this workshop in summer science camps and other various activities to be organized for children from poor and under privileged backgrounds in different parts of Bangalore and Karnataka to teach basic science principles in an activity based manner.
On the first day, Mr.Sanjeev, a retired VSSR ISRO employee demonstrated basic physics principles through models built using household articles like empty talcum powder tins, pens, ice cream balls and straws wtc. After that there was a session on Origami, Japanese art of folding paper. This can be used to effectively teach mathematics and geometry to children.
Next day events started a session by Mr.Balaji from FSMK on free software tools available for enjoyable classroom education. Then Mr.Ravinder from Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) demonstrated fundamental optics principles and talked about astronomy. Workshop ended with volunteers developing their own models to teach scientific principles to children.
It was a real enjoyment and fun to do basic science experiments again. But at the same time it was sad to accept that many of us, never understood science in a practical point view in our school age.
Let us work hard to make sure that every child relishes science and enjoys it by doing but not just by "mugging". Please keep checking the blog for more details on summer camp. Do join us for building a humanistic society with scientific thinking !!
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