Technovation Challenge 2018
My Technovation journey this year started off on February 24, 2018. I had always wanted to introduce computer programming to girls from under privileged background. I had tried conducting workshops in my center on weekends and during holidays. However based on my experience i felt that if i wanted to create a long lasting impact, it had to be done in-school over a period of 3 to 6 months.
This year we planned to conduct a three month long program in a school nearby. We visited the school and briefed them about the Technovation program. The girls and teachers were really excited and we could see the interest in the girls to learn technology. Our first step was to get the computer lab all set up and ready for them to start working on their Apps. While we were working on setting up the infrastructure, we started with team formation and listing out ideas.
It just took these 25 girls fifteen minutes to select their team members and form teams. We started brainstorming on the ideas - the problems that they wanted to solve. They came up with the following ideas - teaching basic computer application software in regional language, creating awareness about child abuse and providing support for the victims, videos demonstrating science experiments in class VI to VIII, quiz app for Math topics in grade 6, game/quiz to create an awareness on healthy food, game/quiz to inspire girls. They finalised the team name, team members, app idea and the name for their apps.
We started spending two hours per week for training the girls. The girls had to be taught basic application software to begin with. They spent the first two weeks learning the basics in Paint, Notepad, Word, Excel and Powerpoint.Time and again they proved that if you are passionately curious to learn, you will beat all odds and learn. Then we started with the basics of programming , App design and development. We started with the paper prototype of the design and started coding the app. We had hands-on activities to teach them the programming concepts. The girls were eager to attend the sessions and all excited to see their final app.
They worked on their apps for almost 4 weeks and finished coding their apps. It was time to start working on our PPT and pitch videos. We spent a whole day working on the Pitch video , PPT and final testing of the App. It was a very busy day and the girls worked hard from 10 till 4 in the evening. However, it was awesome to see their happy and cheerful faces at the end of the day.