Outreach
After learning how my cooking experiments could teach me concepts in Science, Math and Coding, I decided to launch the ScienceCookingCoding program with a group of students who wanted to compete in the global Technovation challenge. This was during the peak Covid times in India during the Fall of 2021 and girls from a very small town in India did not have access to any tutors except for a mentor.
I led classes and mentored 30 Technovation students, and some of them were successful in submitting a completed project. Inspired by this confidence, I started working towards scaling out this program to middle/elementary schools and libraries in the bay area. This was some of the most meaningful work I’ve done, as it combined fields of study that I love and allowed me to share that passion with others.
Mar 2023 update : In the past 3 months I have scaled the number of students I have impacted from 50 to 500, including 300 middle schoolers participating in science fairs or coding competitions. I have also submitted my program proposals to the public libraries at Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Mountain View and Santa Clara. I presented my workshop at the Sunnyvale Public Library on March 12th 2023 to children from grades 3 to 8.
My teaching and mentoring sessions
Pictures from the zoom session
Technovation students competing Global App Challenge
Aug 2021
Introduction
Analogies between a cooking and coding
How the similar concepts help you conquer the fear of coding
Coding can be as easy as cooking from a recipe
15 students
Technovation students in India competing in Global App Challenge
Jan 2022
Introduction
Catch up with Mentor
Sync up on status and deadlines
Planning for next session
5 students
Pictures from the zoom session
Technovation students competing in Global App Challenge
Apr 2022
Introduction
Experiments in cooking
Experiments in science
Experiments in coding
How all 3 processes have similarities
Project presentations similarities
15 students
Challenger School Sunnyvale (about 300 students)
Elementary School
Middle School
First in person meeting with staff and Middle and Elementary School Director Mr. Art Wellersdick (Oct 2022)
Created online slides and tutorials with essential information and made them available to science teachers of Middle and Elementary schools (Oct 2022)
Created a videos series for online presentations to 300+ students. Distributed by science teachers to all students to prepare for school and regional competitions (Feb 2023)
Oct 2022 to Jan 2023
Introduction
How to get started in Science Fairs
From simple to complicated
Kitchen experiments
Presentations skills
300 students
Stratford schools, Bay Area
Middle School
Sept 2022 to Feb 2023
Presentation to Principal (Ms Deshmukh) and science teachers (Sept 2022)
Accepted to present at Stratford school, Milpitas (Oct 2022)
In person presentation and mentoring on Feb 10th 2023 to students competing in regional science fair competitions
100 students competing in school science fairs
50 students competing in Synopsys (regional) science fair
Sunnyvale Public Library
Aug 2022 to March 2023
Program submission to Sunnyvale Public lIbrary and discussions with Wendy (July to Sept 2022)
Discussions with Ms Nan Nguyen on timeline (Dec 2022)
Program discussions with Lorianna Giarrizzo (Jan 2023)
In person presentation and mentoring on (Mar 12th 2023)
45 attendees including adults/parents
Challenger schools, Nevada
Elementary School
Middle School
Aug 2023 : In progress
Plans on presenting to Challenger schools in Nevada
Shared presentation with Regional Director, Mr. Aaron Schiffner, who in turn shared with the Principals of each Challenger school
To be scheduled for next academic year
Having already done a presentation and a mentoring session at Sunnyvale Public Library, I continuing to follow up with other libraries : Los Altos Public Library, Santa Clara Public Library for presentations to the kids from 3rd grade to high school.
I have known Anirudh since June 2021. He was doing schooling. He is so interested in sharing his knowledge with the people who come from underrepresented backgrounds. The passion he showed to mentor the students on Python in an easily understandable way by relating with cooking was really amazing. It made students think coding is not complicated anymore. The girls who were mentored by Anirudh are also doing schooling. They all listened to the projects that he did. After that, the girls also started doing projects on Python and their preferred programming languages. They are all inspired by his projects and his work. We are from India. He is in the USA. There is a huge time difference. Still he woke up early for us and sometimes he stayed late in the night for teaching as per the schedule. He is such a dedicated person. He was also interested in helping our students to understand their city culture. One thing I personally like about him is, he always wanted to improve himself. Whenever the session ends, he always asks what was not good and then what was good. He is open to receiving other's opinions and thoughts.
He has shared a lot of his projects to help the girls for the Technovation Girls project. He explained how to create Business plan for our projects. This helped our girls to prepare Business plan models for their projects. I feel super happy that he is going to launch a science and coding experience in the Bay Area. I wish him all the best for everything that he does!
Thanks,
Padmapriya Ravichandran
(Technovation Mentor, India)