Updates from Annual Day 2022

We successfully completed the annual days (like we had stated earlier, we had to conduct the annual days separately in each school this year due to Covid restrictions) for both Seed Sensorium (9) and Cafe Sensorium (5) schools during the week of April 4th to April 8th 2022. In Cafe Sensorium, we conducted an annual day in one school each day (from 9 AM to 4 PM). In Seed Sensorium, we conducted annual days in 2 schools per day (9 AM to 1 PM in the first school, 2 PM to 6 PM in the second school). In Cafe Sensorium, all competitions were conducted online (all the way from the students viewing the competition rules and materials, downloading the competition “questions”, preparing their submissions on their tablets using the tablet cameras, submitting them online; teachers viewing the submissions made by students, downloading them to their laptops, reviewing them and naming the award winners online; and students seeing the award winners online). Please note that our teachers who conducted the Seed Sensorium competitions in person during the day, came back home, corrected the Cafe Sensorium submissions and entered the award winners online at the end of their daya (before 10 PM). In each school, we had competitions going on in parallel in each of the 5 clubs (Art, Science, Book of the Month, Computers and MLL) in different rooms. In each club, we had 3 rounds of competitions (with winners selected for each round independent of the other rounds). In Seed Sensorium, the award winners were selected at the end of each competition round with prizes awarded right away. In Cafe Sensorium, the award winners were selected at the end of the day by our teachers as stated above, and the awards were distributed to the winners the next day in their respective schools. In total, we conducted the annual day in 14 schools x 5 clubs x 3 rounds within a span of 5 days. In Cafe Sensorium, a total of 358 submissions were made by participants across 5 schools. Please note that we ran Kempayyanahatti HPS competition under the Seed Sensorium format (in person) even though they were a Cafe Sensorium school through the school year. In total, 276 prizes were distributed across all schools and clubs to the annual day winners as well as best students of the year in each school-club. At the beginning of each annual day, we also distributed certificates to all students who participated in our programs this year (with A, B and C grades awarded based on the scores they got by module in each club during the school year). In total, ~800 certificates in Cafe Sensorium and Seed Sensorium. Please note that students who got D during the school year (around 25%) were not issued any certificates. This concludes this year’s programs in Seed and Cafe Sensorium. the schools will reopen on May 16th (earlier this year than in past years to make up for loss of school days in 2021-22). We plan to expand Cafe Sensorium to 5 more schools next year. We will provide more details on next year’s plans as we approach May 16th. Please see attached below, and/or follow links related to the annual day competitions and certifications.

  1. Please see attached the certification templates that we used to issue year-ending certificates for Cafe and Sensoriums. The generation of certificates was fully automated – however printouts of actual certificates were distributed to students in each school. (next year, even the disbursement of certificates will be done online for Cafe Sensorium).
  2. Please see attached the screenshots of the online experience for students and teachers during the live annual day competitions. The entire user flow was designed, tested and deployed within a span on 2 weeks by Nagaveni and her son (kudos to them) with the competition content (videos and papers) I provided them
  3. Please follow this link to watch the Seed Sensorium annual day video (production quality videos were created by the official videographer for only 4 of 9 schools to reduce cost):  https://youtu.be/nNs5tiObHZk
  4. Please follow this link to watch the Cafe Sensorium annual day video (production quality videos were created by the official videographer for 2 of 5 schools to reduce cost; and the rest of the schools were videotaped using smartphone cameras):  https://youtu.be/qgwua-kqUEE
  5. Please follow this link to watch the club specific competition recordings by school for Seed Sensorium (recorded by our our teachers with their smartphone cameras): https://youtu.be/ZLUAH351veQ
  6. Please follow this link to see the actual (sample) submissions made online by students in Cafe Sensorium: https://youtu.be/24Gyag5n6gg

I would like to thank our entire team (Savukar Raj – our main project leader; Mallu Mahadevappa – Cafe Sensorium project coordinator; Sivaprasad – Seed Sensorium project coordinator; Savitha Kumari – book of the month and remedial club teacher; Ramesh – art club teacher; Shweta – Science club teacher; Vishalakshi – computer club teacher; Jyothilakshmi – MLL club teacher; and our 9 Seed Sensorium librarians) for their wonderful and tiresome job prepping for the annual days, and conducting them without missing a single deadline. Hats off to the whole team who make us all very proud. Have a great sprint and summer ahead. And thanks once again for your support.

View Annual Day 21-22 Videos from Seed and Cafe Sensorium

View Ashraya Cafe Sensorium Leonardo Da Vinci Day 2021-22

View Ashraya Seed Sensorium Leonardo Da Vinci Day 2021-22

Annual Day Certificates

        

Updates – April 2022

The year 2021-22 is coming to a close. It has been our most successful (and almost stressful I would have to admit) to date. As you know, we extended the scope of our program from 10 schools, i.e. Kannur, Lokkanahalli, Shagya, Ramapura, Bandalli, Halagapura, Cowdalli, Kempayyana Hatti, Hanur and Ajjipura HPS in Hanur Taluk;  to 15 schools by adding Gundlupet, Annurkeri, Raghavapura, Shindapura and Kuthanur HPS in Gundlupet Taluk. We thus had to operate our program in two separate areas which were 100 Kms from each other; thus posing logistic and coordination challenges. We also ran two distinct program types in parallel and in sync – Seed Sensorium, our onsite program in 9 schools (Kannur, Lokkanahalli, Shagya, Ramapura, Bandalli, Halagapura, Cowdalli, Hanur and Ajjipura HPS in Hanur Taluk) and Cafe sensorium, our online program in 6 schools (Gundlupet, Annurkeri, Raghavapura, Shindapura and Kuthanur HPS in Gundlupet Taluk; and Kempayyana Hatti and Hanur Taluk). We increased the number of students participating in our clubs from the original 900 students to 1275 students (with ~1500 students continuing to use our libraries in seed Sensorium). We started the year late in September 2021 due to the 2nd Covid wave which hit India mid last year. We also had challenges of negotiating class times for all our clubs given that schools operated in limited hours for the first 6 months. And most importantly, we set out to prove that we could run Cafe Sensorium, our online learning program in a scalable and repeatable manner using tablets without any teaching staff on the ground (except the new program coordinator and honorary stipends paid to one school teacher in each school). We do not think that this kind of program has been successfully deployed in India in a rural setting using material and content created by folks in villages. We had to show that the ~60 tablets we deployed would stay safe and handle wear and tear; and that children who are little exposed to technology would be able to take online classes involving experiential learning (and not rote learning). Please note that our experiential learning would need students to submit videos and not documents as their assignments. We had to prove that our online learning platform would be able to handle the load of ~450 students watching videos online, downloading assignments and submitting assignments (videos, images and documents) every day for around 9 lessons per club. And we finally had to prove that we could track progress of both programs using online tracking mechanisms (progress tracking, grading, score submissions) that we trained our teaching staff to use for the first time.

Good news is that we proved that we could do all this successfully, thanks mainly to our staff on the ground, and the support of BEOs in both Taluks. Given that we started in September and ended our programs this week, we finished 7 lessons in all clubs (in both Seed and Cafe Sensorium; out of the 9 lessons that we carry in our syllabi. We are currently in the process of issuing certificates to all passing students with grades online for cafe Sensorium; and offline for Seed Sensorium. Since schools closed 2 weeks earlier than planned by the government (so that they could start the next school early in May as opposed to the usual June), we could not complete the year-ending certification exams and plan to award certificates based on lesson scores. We are ending this year with the annual day as usual. But this year, we are embarking on an annual day on a scale and complexity level we have never done before for two reasons (1)

Due to Covid cases still prevalent in India, we have been asked to conduct the annual day competitions in each school individually rather than bringing all students together to compete against each other in one single competition day. Thus, we literally have to conduct 15 annual days (one in each school) as opposed to one single annual day !!! (2) Our annual day for Cafe Sensorium will be conducted online – i.e. the competitions will be viewed online by the participants, and after they complete their work, they will make their submissions online; with awards being announced online as well. We built the entire process for online annual competitions on our Cafe Sensorium learning platform. All the competition materials had to be created in two forms – online (videos and documents) and offline (on paper). I would like to thank Ms. Nagaveni and Praneel (her son who is doing his internship at ASHRAYA this year) for helping build the functionalities on the website to facilitate the online competition; and to our daughter Divya for doing the artwork for the website pages related to the competition.

We are finally ready and prepared to conduct the annual days the week of April 4th to April 8th for 15 schools in Seed and Cafe Sensorium. Our teachers and project coordinators will go from school to school that week to conduct the competitions in 5 clubs (we are scrapping the all-rounder competition this year due to lack of time available in each school). Each club will have 3 rounds of competitions. We have already purchased the prizes for all competition winners (this year, since we are conducting the competition in each school separately, we will have to award winners in each school, thus increasing the number of awards we need to make 15 fold !!!).  For Seed Sensorium, we will conduct the competitions in 2 schools per day (3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in afternoon). And for Cafe Sensorium, we will conduct the competition in one school each day (6 hours per day). For Seed Sensorium, we will select the winners and give them awards at the end of each competition round without any formal ceremony due to lack of time in each school. The Cafe Sensorium competition winners will be given their awards on April 9th since we will have to grade their submissions after the competitions are done. Goes without saying that the workload on our staff will be very high this year during the competition week – we intend to give them a special bonus for pulling this off for us.

Please see attached the invitations for the annual day competitions in Seed and Cafe Sensoriums. We will send you videos from the events once they are done. Your feedback is always welcome. Please do let us know if you would like to attend our annual day in any of the15 locations planned for the week of April 4th to 8th.

Updates- March 2022

Hope all of you are staying safe and healthy. On Mar 3 2022, students in our Seed Sensorium art program painted the 2nd mural of the year at Kempayyana Hatti HPS. The theme was signatures. We always think of signatures as those we leave behind in a letter to someone. But nature and the world around us are filled with diverse signatures left behind – sunset hues, fossils, contrails and fallen leaves. There are also signatures left behind by horrors past – rubble, ruins and stains.  I developed the concepts for this mural, our art teacher sketched them on paper and trained the students, and the students drew them on the Kempayyana Hatti school wall yesterday. The whole event took 6 hours from start to finish. You can watch the video of the entire event by clicking on this link: https://youtu.be/74cqEwvWh6M

Updates – Jan 2022

Hope all of you are staying safe and healthy. On Jan 17 2022, students in our Seed Sensorium art program painted a mural at Shagya HPS yesterday. The theme was the impact corona virus has had on society and our lives. I developed the concepts, our art teacher sketched them on paper and trained the students, and the students drew them on the Shagha school wall yesterday. The whole event took 6 hours from start to finish. Please zoom in and look at each of the 9 artworks – each is a statement on our lives today. You can watch the video of the entire event by clicking on this link: https://youtu.be/AXWU25FvOlY

Mural on Corona Virus

Updates – December 2021

 Happy New Year 2022 to you and your respective families. After a long time (close to 2 years) due to Covid, my family and I finally made a trip to India in Dec 2021. During this trip, I was on the road visiting schools from Dec 20 to Dec 23.

  1. On Dec 20, I had a team meeting with the entire Seed and Cafe Sensorium team (our project advisor; 2 project coordinators; art, science, book of the month, computer, MLL all-rounder club teachers; and 9 seed-sensorium school librarians). Sundip and Sudha Gorai, 2 of our donors, dialed in from Atlanta, GA and interacted with the team. I also visited Kempayyana Hatti school where we run the hybrid Cafe Sensorium + Seed Sensorium program (i.e. students are in Cafe Sensorium but the Seed Sensorium teachers conduct the classes to answer any questions and guide the students. I finally visited the Rampaura book library (could not visit the school because it was 5 PM by the time I reached Rampura). During the meeting, we officially acknowledged the purchase of 40 more tablets thanks to funding from Open India. This brings the total number of tablets we have procured to date to 90 – 50 of them have been already deployed in the various schools; and we plan to deploy 15 more tablets (9 tablets to the seed sensorium schools since the all-rounder program in each Seed Sensorium school will be done using the online Cafe Sensorium curriculum; and 6 tablets to the Cafe Sensorium schools to reduce the student to tablet ratios). We will reserve 25 tablets for expanding Cafe Sensorium to more schools in the 2022-23 school year starting July 2022).
  2. On Dec 21, I had the pleasure of visiting 4 Cafe Sensorium schools in Gundalpet Taluk (Shindanapura HPS, Annuerkeri HPS, Gundalpet HPS and Raghavapura HPS). The great news is that the  BEO of Gundalpet Taluk accompanied me and my project advisor to all the 4 schools where we both interacted with the students and asked them about they were using the tablets and how useful they found our programs to be. The interactions were very fruitful and I was enthused to learn that the Cafe Sensorium was progressing very well – the model where we have one project coordinator and one teacher in each school (government teachers to whom we pay a small stipend) was working better than we thought it would. The quality of the submissions were almost on par with those in Seed Sensorium in 3 of the 4 schools. We also launched a live chat session capability when I was visiting these schools, through which the students could ask questions to our Seed Sensorium teachers from the website and get them answered within 2 hours. The BEO was kind enough to host a lunch for us at his office and also spent time in his office talking to us about expansion of our program to 5 more schools next year.
  3. On Dec 23, I visited Kuthanur HPS (could not visit on Dec 21 since schools close at 4 PM). For this visit, my family (Jayanthi, our treasurer; and our daughter Divya) also accompanied me from Mysore. This school happened to be the best of the 5 CS schools in terms of student participation and support from the school HM.
  4. All Seed Sensorium (9 schools) and Cafe Sensorium schools (6) have completed 3 lessons since the start of the program in Sept 2021 in 5 clubs (art, science, book of the month, computers and MLL) and 1 lesson in the all-rounder program. Given that schools started late this year, we are on track to finish 7 lessons in each club-school (as opposed to 9 lessons in pre-COVID years). Please note that we have built functionalities on our website to track progress of all our programs online – if you need to see these updates, please do let us know and we will get you access.
  5. On Dec 26, I had a meeting with my team during which we discussed some key action items to work on based on the learnings from the team meeting and school visits. Main areas of focus in the coming months are:
    • Complete book audit of all libraries in the Seed Sensorium schools (been almost 2 years since we did it due to Covid)
    • Add more books to our libraries
    • Deploy 15 tablets to the SS and CS schools (see above)
    • Look at feasibility of conducting the annual day this year in March 2022 online (to avoid students joining in one place for a big event like we used to do in the past)
    • Start using the live chat functionality to provide online remedial support to Cafe Sensorium students
    • Fill gaps in Cafe Sensorium content we have identified in some lessons across clubs
    • Do mural paintings in 2 Seed Sensorium schools (Shagya and Kempayyana Hatti) in Jan & Feb 2022
    • Teachers to upload the best student submissions for both Cafe and Seed Sensorium onto our website, so that we can provide access to the same to our donors and well-wishers
    • Start the process of transcribing and subtitling the videos in various Indian languages using automated tools so that we can deploy Cafe Sensorium in other states next year once it is proven successful
    • Build content for 2 new clubs for next year (consensus was to start two new experiential clubs for next year for only top students – to be chosen from amongst agriculture, money, drama and music)
    • Start a call center with two employees to provide live remedial support for Cafe Sensorium students (if they have problems understanding the online content)

Please click the link below to see photos and videos of my school visits: https://youtu.be/SVxk7m6uYNo

Updates – September 2021

Hope all of you are staying safe and healthy through the pandemic. Our ASHRAYA programs are going on well through the pandemic. AS you know, prior to the aborted closing of the 2020-21 school year in April 2021, we had two programs – Seed Sensorium, the onsite learning program in 9 schools in Hanur Taluk; and Cafe Sensorium, the online learning program in 5 schools in Gundalpet Taluk and 1 school in Hanur Taluk. We completed building the content and process for the Cafe Sensorium online platform in March 2021 (with some updates that we keep doing every month in the form of new videos and new lessons). For Cafe Sensorium, we had registered 500 students on our website and started the online curriculum in all 7 clubs using 3 desktops in each of the 6 schools, before the schools were shut down due to Covid’s second wave in India.  Since schools did not start on time this year in June, and since desktop accessibility was not compliant with social distancing rules, we purchased 50 low-cost tablets from Amazon India (Rs. 7,000 per tablet with cover and screen protector) for a total cost of ~ Rs. 3.5 lakhs. We would like to thank Mr. Pawan Gupta for donating towards this bulk purchase. Since this purchase involved bulk-buying, we created an Amazon India Business account (which allows bulk purchases with discounts).  Further, since bulk purchases of tablets are restricted in India by suppliers to avoid price arbitrage by resellers,  we worked with people we know in Amazon India to help facilitate these bulk purchases. We then configured these tablets (with privacy settings and the right apps downloaded) and deployed them to 5 schools (2 in Hanur Talk and 3 in Gundalpet Taluk) in July 2021. Schools reopened at this time in a reduced mode with only 6-8th standard standards coming in controlled batches every day. Our tablets have allowed students to stay 6 feet apart in a large classroom and access our content online using hotspots that we purchased in each school. We then registered a fresh batch of students (~50 students per school) online and started Cafe Sensorium in these 5 schools in a hybrid mode, i.e. students access the content online but our teachers guide them in the classroom as needed. We have already completed one lesson in each of the 7 clubs in these 5 schools. Each lesson on Cafe Sensorium follows a 3 week, step cycle: first week in which the students read the content and watch the videos online; and view/download the assignments; second week in which they conduct the projects/assignments offline; and third week in which they submit the assignments in the form of scanned images (for quizzes and written content) and videos (projects in action). Our teachers are now in the process of correcting the first lessons in each club for these 5 schools and submitting the scores online for students to view. This hybrid program has worked very well and helped kids who have shyness and apprehension towards online tools. School principals and teachers have also been using our tablets to help students access government provided content for their main classes. Please note that in our current mode, students are allowed to use the tablets in the school premises only, and the tablets are kept under lock and key by the school principals at all other times. Please follow this link to see how students have been using the tablets for accessing content on Safe Sensorium and doing the assignments in their classroom settings: https://youtu.be/A2R0C34cKyk

The Government of Karnataka has decided to reopen the schools fully on Sept 6 2021, only for 6th to 8th grade students. Since all our teachers have been vaccinated, we are planning to restart Seed Sensorium in 9 schools in Hanur Taluk, and Cafe Sensorium in 6 schools (5 in Gundalpet Taluk and 1 in Hanur Taluk). This time however, we plan to use 10 tablets per school in each of the Cafe Sensorium schools so that we are not dependent on old desktops that are in various stages of decline; and also because tablets allow students to access content in smaller batches. To do this, we are still 10 tablets short (we have 50 tablets and we need 60 tablets for 6 schools).  We also plan to buy and deploy 1 tablet per school in each of the Seed Sensorium schools as well so that students can get the benefit of online learning methods along with regular classroom learning.  And going forward, we also plan to add 1-2 schools more to Cafe Sensorium (and maybe migrate some schools from Seed Sensorium to Cafe Sensorium) so that we can scale better and also get students to be more tech savvy in their learning. We intend to purchase these devices and deploy to the schools in the coming months.

We will send monthly updates on our programs. Once again, please stay safe and healthy; and have a great year ahead.

Tutorial on using Tablets – https://youtu.be/A2R0C34cKyk

 Updates – July 2021

Hope all of you are doing well and have been vaccinated against COVID. Been almost 4 months since I sent you an update on ASHRAYA. The last time I wrote to you I had informed you about the successful launch of Cafe Sensorium (online) in 5 schools in Gundalpet area. We registered 450 students on our portal and started the club intro lessons for each club in these 5 schools. We had also restarted our Seed Sensorium (in-school) programs at the 11 schools in the Hanur area after schools reopened around Jan 2021. However, as you all know so well, the COVI second wave hit India in a bad way mid April 2021 and all schools were shut down again. And they continue to be shut down to date with no planned reopen date announced by the local Karnataka government. All education in these rural areas have come to a stop unfortunately, and all kids last year were given a pass grade in their respective classes with only 2 months of school sessions.

The only good news is that Cafe Sensorium is all complete with lesson content for all clubs on the website and proof points that the process works (from registration to account creation to viewing content online to doing assignments to submitting assignments online to viewing grades online). We are right in the process of launching Cafe Sensorium for students who have smartphones in both Hanur and Gundalpet areas. We have registered 50 students in Gundalpet area and 40 students in Hanur area onto our portal and trained them on using our portal through Zoom training sessions. These students will start going through their onlines lessons next week. However, 90 students out of the total possible 2500 students in the two areas of operation is a very small penetration due to the fact that smartphone penetration in these rural areas is very low (and students can use these smartphones only when their parents have come back home from work). We are hence in the process of buying ~20 low cost tablets (Samsung entry level tablets are available for ~$80 on the Amazon website). We will distribute these tablets to students in villages next week (after adding sim cards and hotspot devices to each tablet). Each tablet can be used by 5 students who live nearby (one day per week for each student) – thus allowing us to get 100 more students to use Cafe Sensorium. We are still facing challenges of buying many tablets from Amazon.In because the website is restricting us from buying more than the 12 we have already bought, suspecting that we are buying in bulk to resell (:)). We are trying to contact the reseller directly to see if they can help us buy more tablets. We will keep you posted on developments – any suggestion you have in circumventing this issue would be most welcome.