RTC Impressions – Feb 2024

(by Rajaraman Krishnan, volunteer Asha Chennai)

IITM Pravartak and Asha are running 6 Rural Technology Centres, 4 in Thiruvallur Dist and 2 in Thoothukudi Dist. Project work is an important aspect of the courses offered by the RTCs. Children develop a fairly involved project related to their course. For the courses that we offered in the July to Jan semester, students had developed their projects. We provided the students an opportunity to present their projects to a panel of eminent judges. Here are the details.

See the full photo album here.

See our report from one year earlier for details of our courses at that time as well as the reason why we emphasise project work.

RTC Courses

Last year we were offering the two basic courses “Basic Digital Literacy” and “Basic Programming” and just one advanced course on “Web Development”. Since then our RTCs have started offering two more advanced courses “Javascript Animations” and “Physical Computing”. All the three advanced courses are part of Code.org’s CS Discoveries course intended for 6^th to 10^th std students. Note that the basic courses are offered by all the RTCs. However the advanced courses are offered in rotation by various RTCs so as to provide continuing studying options for the students at the RTC which at the same time not overwhelming the one or two teachers at each of the RTC.

There were number of project submissions for each of the basic and advanced courses. As the number of project submissions in each of the advanced courses is less, we grouped them together as part of a same competition.

Importance of RTC Impressions Competition

In the last years report, I had talked about the importance of project work and why it is not merely an evaluation tool but is a very important instructional tool. But we could have stopped at that. i.e. Have the students submit the projects which are reviewed by their teachers and provided some feedback. We have over the years realised the value of featuring the projects as part of the competition. While an event like this does serve the purpose of PR, for most part these events do not serve that purpose much and that is certainly not the primary goal. Some of the goals are detailed below.

Public Speaking and Presentation Skills

Children often do not get the opportunity to develop the skills required to talk to a room full of strangers, demonstrate and explain their work. RTC Impressions provides the children just this opportunity.

Competition

While competition should not be the goal of the students, competition does force the children to bring out the best in them. It also focusses the energy of the teachers and brings out the best in them as well. We as an organisation try out best to ensure that this is taken in the right spirit and this doesn’t become the most important aspect of the event.

Exposure

The event is usually held in a good Grade-A kind of facility thanks to organisations like IITM, Amazon, Pravartak etc. This in itself and the travel to Chennai provides a great exposure to the children. Further seeing the work done by other students from other RTCs and through their interactions with judges from the industry and academia, provides them a great deal of exposure.

Feedback

It is important for a person’s work to be impartially viewed by others (especially the people they report to) and to receive feedback. While the students do have their work reviewed by their teachers, this provides greater visibility for their work and also visibility for the teachers to show what they have done with their students.

Projects Submissions in 2023 – Semester 2

The following table captures the projects that were submitted as part of the course work for this semester.

To give an idea of the progress made in the last year. In Feb 2023, 68 projects were submitted from 4 RTCs. This year 181 projects were submitted by 388 students from 6 RTCs!

With the selection getting more and more difficult, the quality of the selected projects were indeed very high. We had a tough time selecting the projects for the RTC Impressions. The initial selection was done by volunteers Venkat and Rajaram with help from the lead RTC teacher Kumari. The teachers had about a week after the selection to train the students on how to present their work to judges, and make some last minute corrections and improvements.

RTC Impressions Feb 2024 – Organising

This time too Pravartak rented a hall in their IITM Research Park to organise this. Like the previous times, this was also a great venue for our event. We used the mini-auditorium and a hall next door for our competitions. Food was also arranged for the students right at the venue.

Students were coming for the function from all the RTCs in Thiruvallur and Thoothukudi. The teachers and children from Thoothukudi had travelled by van overnight to come here. They also returned the same day back to Thoothukudi! Children from Thiruvallur were also brought by 4 vans from various locations. Some 75 students and 14 teachers came to the IITM Research Park.

The following people agreed to being judges for our function.

Judges-

1. Karthikmanoj R – He has over 10 years of corporate experience. Karthik started his career with Barclays and is now with Amazon. He also has 5 years of entrepreneurship experience in TechBuzz Projects and Entrent Media.
2. Shankar Subramanian – He is an IITM Faculty and a startup founder. He has industry experience in IBM, Intel and Medtronic.
3. Srividya Kailasam – Project Management/ Scientist for 25+ years. She works for Pravartak as a project consultant and is involved in evaluating and defining many of the projects that are undertaken by them.
4. Deepak Umapathy: CEO of Crossbow Labs and a consultant in enterprise cybersecurity and privacy.
5. K Arun – Worked as an independent Consultant/ Product Manager in the field of Supply Chain management. Currenlty retired.
6. Raja Chidambaram – Technical Architect for 18 years in media and Cloud products
7. Aiswariya Chidambaram – Director – Account Management at Indegene.
8. Purva Bhatter – Completed post-doctoral fellowship with IITM. Currently running an organisation KrVidhya that focuses on improving science education in schools. She has been the science trainer for Asha for last couple of years.
9. Rajani Arjun Shankar – She has been a middle school teacher for 8 years. She is involved with freelance writing and translating projects now.

RTC Impressions – The Competitions

All the judges and the vans carrying the students reached the venue a little late by about 10:00 and the event finally started by about 10:20. In addition to the students, teachers and judges several volunteers and staff of Asha were also present and helping with the organising of the events. And staff of Pravartak and IITM Research Park were available for any help with the facilities. We also had four visitors from the Government Education Dept. They came representing the School Clubs program and the Schools of Excellence initiatives of the TN Education Department. They got to see all the work done by the children and also interacted with the students and teachers. They stayed till the end and gave their very positive feedback about our program.

The main stage of the mini-auditorium was used for the presentation projects. The children presented their presentation after which there was Q & A related to both the contents of the presentation and the technology behind their work. The children were also asked to make some modifications on the fly and show to the judges their understanding.

The Scratch programming competition was held in the back of the mini-auditorium itself. The children were called one batch at a time and asked to present their program to the judges. The judges tried the games and programs themselves. Here again there was Q & A asking the students how various things in the program works and were again asked to make changes on the fly.

The Advanced Projects competition was held in the other hall. Here again just the team presenting their work was called to present to the judges. Judging here was probably the most challenging for the judges. The three courses for the projects – Web Development, Javascript Animations and Physical Computing – were very different. It helped that all of them came with huge experience in the software field. Arun was explaining how he personally went over the various courses in the days leading up to the event and even then couldn’t understand how many of the students had done many of the features. Students out of their own self-interest had gone well beyond the requirements of the course. For instance, Sivapriyan the boy who won the Web-Development prize, ran a small webserver and DB and has also implemented a small backend code! Even our teachers do not know how to do this!

We all had lunch from about 1:15 to about 1:45. The competitions completed by about 3:00 and the judges arrived at the result in about 15 mins. The prize distribution function started after this.

RTC Impressions – Prize Distributions

Then 3 judges, Aishwariya, Raja and Arun – one from each of the competitions took the stage along with Rajaram and Venkat from Asha.

Each of the judges talked about the very high quality of the projects they observed and how narrow the gaps were between the project. They appreciated the great work done by the students and also Asha for conducting such a great program for the children. Venkat thanked the judges and Rajaram talked about the reason why we conduct RTC Impressions. Gifts were given to all the judges. We also observed one minute of silence for Dhatchayani, an RTC teacher at our Poondi RTC (which has been closed since then) who passed away on 23^rd Nov 2023.

Each of the judges then announced the winners of the prizes were announced. The judges themselves distributed the medals to the students. There were some tearful faces but we were happy to note that all the RTCs including one that had to shut down (Poondi) was represented by winners! Here are the list of winners:

Presentation Competition

1^st Prize: Homophones and Homonyms by Suthiksha P, Poomika S and Pavithra P from Kalugumalai RTC

2^nd Prize: Emmathamum Sammadhame by Kavya S from Thomur RTC

3^rd Prize: Vivasayam by K.Sukran, V. Santhoshkumar, V. Bhuvanesh from Kannigaiper RTC

Consolation Prize: Kayathar by F.Rabiath Faariza , K.Mohammad Sheik Arsaq and M.A.C.D.Ahamed Abdullah Ebrahim from Kayathar RTC.

Programming Competition

1^st Prize: Crazy Games by Mathan Kumar G from Kalugumalai RTC

2^nd Prize: Ludo and Tic Tac Toe by N. Monisha from Seethanjeri RTC

3^rd Prize: Rescue my Friend by S.Ranjith kumar,V.Sathvika,N.Sarmi from Seethanjeri RTC

(and) Match the Shadow by Ranjith S, Marudhu pandiyan R from Kanakamma Chathram RTC

Advanced Projects Competition

Here rather than comparing the projects in the various categories, the judges chose to give one prize for each course.

JavaScript Animations: Rocket Game by Chenthamizh Chelvan A, Banu Prasad A from Kanakamma Chathram RTC.

Physical Computing: Treasure Hunt by Priskilla V from Kannigaiper RTC.

Web Development: Aquarium by Sivapriyan S from Thomur RTC.

(and) HTML Projects by Dhanush A from Poondi RTC.

After this most of the groups went to the Besant Nagar beach, spent some time there, and then went back to their places.

Impressions of the RTC Impressions

One of the judges, Ms. Poorva Bhattar, who runs an academic initiative of her own said, “The most striking feature of the experience is the confidence of the students. They look in the eye and speak. They are absolutely comfortable with machines and programming, indicative of their involvement in learning. And, since they work on the programs on their own, the projects are demonstrative of their logic. The RTC seems to be holding the right nerve which is encouraging their learning and associated outcome. This is a great initiative.”

Ms. Aiswarya Chidrambaram said, “This is my first time volunteering to judge the event. Great experience! Thoroughly enjoyed the creativity, innovation and talent of young kids from rural India. Asha is doing a phenomenal job nurturing these talented kids. More power to you!”

K. Sukran, V. Santhosh kumar, V. Bhuvanesh who presented on the topic Vivasayam said,” We are living in the village. Agriculture is very important here, so we thought we could make a presentation about it. First we learned Open office features. Then we started the project and it took us two months to complete the project. While presenting, we were very scared at the start because this was our first time. But when the judges came and asked us a very friendly questions and even talked to us, it made us feel confident. The IIT Travel Experience was a very happy moment for us. They don’t take us to competition and excursion from our school. It has given us a good experience and made our parents feel proud.”

Raabiath Faariza, who presented on the topic of Kayathar said,” I got the idea from watching a lot of shorts on YouTube, and we decided to give a presentation on the topic. It took me one and a half month to write this topic and we took a lot of pictures and videos in person to do it. It was a new experience for us. Our teachers helped us for our background speech for this topic. We came from Kayathar by Van. We all came together singing and dancing very happily and it was a new experience for me. Food and toilet facilities were arranged very nicely on the way and they looked after us very well. I was very surprised to enter IIT Research park Chennai and see the buildings there. I found the topics presented by everyone in the competitions very different and interesting. We won the third prize. We left in the evening eager to come back and do better next time. We visited Besant Nagar beach on our way back. This trip gave me a lot of experience and I went home very happy.”