Help us in Building a bunch of Entrepreneurial Kids

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Help us in Building a bunch Entrepreneurial Kids

Vision

We believe that “Every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer science and use technology”. We also believe that our kids are creative enough to generate ideas that can transform their community. We want to them to become entrepreneurs - people who can leverage technology to create stuffs which can solve the problems in their community. This is our search for the next generation of Mark Zuckerburgs, Larry Page, Steve Jobs: plant the seeds for our own silicon valley in India.

Goal:

Make kids build their own android app, which is one of the solutions for problems in their community.
Make them logical thinkers and self-aware individuals by conducting lessons in an interactive manner and push their academic achievements by exposing them to available competitive exams.
Drive Digital literacy (searching, emailing, etc) lessons by integrating them with daily Science, English and Social lessons

Methods:

Take lessons from code.org and deliver them via paper worksheets and tablets. Teach algorithmic thinking, exposure to internet (Google, Email), enable self-learning workshops. Use a in house WiFi hotspot and leverage technology to make learning high interactive and engaging.
Create our own pool of lesson plans for integrating computational thinking. http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/09/how-to-teach-computational-thinking/
Make math interactive by leveraging lessons plans from available resources like http://www.mathbuddyonline.com/

Target amount 3 Lacs.

Financial Partners (> 25K or > 370$), folks who have a say in our venture and get to be directors, can participate in our curriculum/project designing meetings.

Angel Investor (> 5K INR or > 75$) you get to be investing partners, get to have more than 5% of holdings, if we (us and kids) end up monetizing our efforts you get returns.

Philanthropist: You can donate any amount more than 100 INR. We believe that if there are 3K such drops our fund raiser will be over. You will receive consistent updates

Infra donors: If you can donate projectors, tablets, printers or A4 sheets, old computers, you will fall in any of the above categories based on the value of your donation.

I have a list of basic items we would need in the Amazon wishlist. http://amzn.in/2wfVyxT will make sure this list updated periodically.

Items needed
- 30 more tablets
- 4 basic configuration laptops
- Projector
- loud speaker
- Usb charging hubs and spike busters
- Chrome Cast
- Wifi Router.

If you are apprehensive about money donation you can order items online and send the package to me directly. Please email me at bharathwaj.s2016@teachforindia.org or call me at +91-7395938809 to get more details of my mailing address. School address: Chennai Boys Higher Secondary School, Kodambakkam Road Saidapet, Chennai, popularly known as Manthoppu Boys High School.

Who we are:
Our School: Chennai Corporation Boys Higher Secondary School, Saidapet (a Government School)

Me: I worked as a Project Leader at D. E. Shaw & Co/Arcesium LLC, for almost 7 years and currently working as a Teacher in the school as part of Teach For India fellowship.

My teammates (co Fellows from TFI): Balaji, was a Software engineer at Ericcson for couple of years and has been a teacher for more than 18 Months at our school. Maharaja, a hardworking, excellent college grade from Sastra university who brings in his excellence in all the work he does.
We have 3 classrooms and close to 80 Kids and we have raised 10 tablets.

The inequity: Rich Get Richer poor get poorer: Most of our students are from very low income families. Most of their parents have hardly any time other than fighting for survival. Many of our students don't have fathers. Many of their fathers are drunkards and the children witness violence everyday. Many of them are not even in the mental state to study. Whereas the counter parts in private schools, have access to internet in their class. They have projectors in each classrooms with dedicated internet and one child one computer during lab sessions. This initiative is to bridge that gap.

Our interactive methods, especially lessons from code.org have motivated students so much that they ask for it as much as a PlayTime class. We believe this will improve our attendance % and get more kids to school as we are also trying to address their a child's basic desire I.e to be JOYFUL and PLAYFUL.

What we are doing currently:

We are conducting "computational thinking" via code.org lessons and resources and integrating digital literacy with regular Science and Social classes.

We have piloted the algorithm thinking via code.org only to 16 students due to resource constraints we need your help to expand this to all students in all 3 classes. We also leverage a portion of this amount to support our basic classroom supplies like dustless chalks, markers, stationary for kids, exam paper/worksheet print outs etc.

Any queries, please drop a mail at bharathwaj.s2016@teachforindia.org

Algorithm/Coding class in action

Ask for an update

18th March 2017

Thanks for the contribution so far. We have bought a spike buster from the money and covered internet Hotspot charges for the last one month. With current amount we are planning to get a projector and use the rest of the amount for basic classroom supplies and expenditures. Recieved a 2.1 speaker and a screen cast device as infra donation. We need to raise atleast 30% more to start our venture. We have started integrating computational thinking in our daily lessons to manage time as well.