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How it feels being a tutor in an Experience Karkhana Class.

🇳🇵 · Karkhana · Aavash Baral

Have any of you ever taken a class before. Classes can include a generic Science class, a Mathematics class, an English class, or even any classes related to numerous disciplines. If not, have you ever wondered how a desired information is conveyed to the audience/students? For me, these were the two questions I had no prior thoughts to. However, I was intrigued when I was assigned to share roles in a “ Karkhana Experience Class ” for the first time since being a part of the Karkhana community . Hence, I started to wonder. How do teachers take their classes in reality? How do they prepare beforehand? How do they decide on the route they wish to take to make their audience understand the things they’re trying to convey? And finally, how do they ensure that what they were trying to deliver was conveyed? My questions gave rise to even more ones, but all these internal conflicts ultimately boiled down to two things: What I was trying to convey? and Whom this delivery was intended for? Basically, an Experience Karkhana Class is different from your typical class. Yes, it involves the delivery of information to students, but what is different is the mode of delivery. What makes an Experience Karkhana Class different is it incorporates a few new elements into the day-to-day setting, deviating from the presets of a typical classroom that focuses on providing students with only theoretical knowledge regarding numerous topics and not focusing on their applicability. There are 3 elements that make an Experience Karkhana Class totally unique: We focus on teaching children using a hands-on approach. We use the CAT approach , as we build curiosity in children, guide them through the activities and finally make them reflect on what they have learned. Further, we ask them how this is linked to what they learn in their theory classes. We focus on incorporating the “fun” and “creativity” element into their studies/learning. I have always been an advocate of teaching practical applications of everything we learn in the daily lives of people. So, I have dedicated my thoughts towards providing children with information I had always intended to pass on. I had the means, but I needed something much more important. I believe a connection of some sort with the students was necessary. So, I decided to present myself not as a teacher, but as a person who they could be comfortable around to talk and share things with. This was, however, only related to me and my thoughts. What would happen in a class would be something totally unpredictable and most probably, different from what I had imagined. So, when it was time to take the class, I was particularly nervous, not regarding the delivery but rather with the connection I had initially hoped to build with the children. To my relief, I was able to connect with the students not via telling them jokes but instead, their curiosity. They were keen to try out this completely “new” modality of learning and were interested with regards to what I had to deliver. At first, I had to create a scenario by the help of which they could get insights on what we were trying to do in the class. This instantly introduced the element of curiosity in them. So, the fear that I had initially regarding the connection with the children became trivial. Then, when we delved into the actual activity, the children were so excited that they had fun along the course of the actual “ making ” that we emphasize on. All in all, what I felt was a mixture of fear, excitement, and accomplishment while taking the actual Experience Karkhana Class. The experience that I got from taking this class, and the sense of satisfaction for having shared the knowledge I have with someone else made me feel accomplished to some extent. Yes, you teach students things that you know but what’s more important is the fact that your audience needs to connect with you while you are trying to relay something. Otherwise, the whole process of teaching becomes insignificant. Therefore, teaching is not only limited to spreading knowledge but also to bring about a connection such that what you share becomes a part of value addition in the learner’s life. The post How it feels being a tutor in an Experience Karkhana Class. appeared first on Demo Main .

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Spring into Action

🇳🇵 · Karkhana · Karkhana

It was a busy day at Karkhana. We were trying to figure out some activities that could help students understand energy in action. After researching for a moment, a group of our team members came with a very exciting conclusion, ‘A PRANK BOX’. The basic idea of the activity is that it’s a small box with a cover and something pops out when we open it. We can teach students about how the stored energy in a box is converted into energy in action when we open the cover of the box. We solved one problem but there was another problem again. How can we make something pop out from a box? Sunoj came up with an idea and tried to make a spring out of thin length of rods. It did not really work that well but it gave us idea about how we could solve the problem. We then tried to make spring using different materials like Acrylic sheets, plastic bottles. Plastic bottles finally did the job. It was good enough to solve our problem for the moment. We really found a cool trick to make spring using plastic bottles. We attached a long rod to a drilling machine to help us roll those sheets in a shape of spring. We then used hot gun to soften the acrylic sheets. Finally, we were done with a spring. We made a box using four of these springs attached to each corner of a box. In the meantime, we were trying to make another box with a different mechanism. We came up with something like a cloth clip instead of spring and attached it to the box. We put small pieces of papers inside the box. You could visibly see those pieces of papers flying all around as you opened the cover of the box. You could actually use these box for someone’s birthday too. We had a lot of fun and we learnt a lot by making this activity. But it’s not just about fun. This activity was a resultant to make students understand about Energy-In-Action. We failed, multiple times, but through constant iterations, we came up to a model which we felt good about, and that has been the thing for every activities we have designed at Karkhana. Failing, Learning, Making, and Improving. The post Spring into Action appeared first on Demo Main .

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