Experimenting with new ways of learning in India

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed approaches to teaching and learning around the world. We spoke to CoderDojo champions to find out how they are engaging learners in different ways.

A willingness to experiment

In India, we have been in touch with the community through regular calls, group discussions, and online meetups. One of the things that stood out was the community’s willingness to experiment and try new things.

Suprio from CoderDojo SHAKTI shared, “When we were impacted by COVID-19 and Amphan, we did not know all the answers up front, but did we lose any hope. Our group experimented to learn and grow together.” CoderDojo India team worked with SHAKTI’s team and translated 10 projects in Bengali which will be now tested on field in a few months.  

Sneha from CoderDojo@MGSL told us that they have begun to run hour-long sessions over Google Meet and have received positive feedback from both parents and children. They’ve even started to run sessions with children as young as six years old!

Ms. Aadya age 5, experimenting with Kodable

Amid countrywide lockdowns, migrating towards online learning emerged as the obvious approach, but not everyone has access to the resources to deliver online sessions themselves.  Instead, Chetan and Nidhi Kulshestra from Chota Byte Club, Pune, India have shared the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s code-along videos with their Ninjas, as part of the Digital Making at Home initiative. They also circulated offline activities through parent WhatsApp groups to continue to engage learners. 

Screenshots from parent WhatsApp groups to share activities with learners

Different experimental ways to support learners are emerging all across the country, and we appreciate whatever steps you have taken or plan to take in future. You know what’s best for your learners and we fully trust you with the choices you’ll make. 

How we can support you

CoderDojo HQ has been running regular community calls for the last six months. You can access all of them here.

To provide support to the community in India, my colleague Divya and I are hosting ‘Come together to learn together’. This is a two-part training series around using offline projects to teach computational thinking and physical computing. 

Divya and Vasu will be hosting ‘Come together to learn together’: a two-part training series around using offline projects.

Part I: Teaching computational thinking skills through offline activities

Part II: Usage of the Raspberry Pi in physical computing

 

You can also see our brand new webpage which outlines all of the different ways to run your Dojo to get some ideas on how you could run your Dojo at this time.  

We’d love to hear about your experiences of being involved in a Dojo. How are you thinking of approaching the future with your club? What guidance and support would be most useful to you? To get in touch, you can:

• Email us at [email protected] 
• Schedule a call with Vasu

Schedule a call with Vasu!