My 1st Robotics teaching session

Morning, when I reached Ahmadabad after completing my training from Pune, I was continuously thinking how to present myself in the class. My tiring journey has ended up with an ecstasy, for the 1st session of robotics. I had rehearsed the 80 minutes session more than 80 times in my mind, but when I entered the class, the actual things that happened were incredible.

I was concerned how to make my robotics sessions more interesting for my students, and not making them burdened by the introduction of this 12th subject in their curriculum. I wanted that each student of the class should accept the subject along with learning the concepts. But, as I entered the class and introduced myself as their robotics trainer, just the word “ROBOTIXXX” did the work like a magic spell!!!

There was a wave of astonishment speeded throughout the class. All happy faces with a fascinating glow in their eyes were keen to learn robotics, and it became my strongest motivating force to start the subject in their academics in the best way I can. I decided that unlike my unanswered curious childhood questions, the curiosity of my students is definitely going to get satisfied by my session.

I asked for the brief introduction of the class, including their names, favorite subject and their ambitions, to connect the subject robotics with their favorite subject and use of robotics in future once they fulfill their goals.

It was 10 am, the breakfast time..So I asked the class why they take breakfast, lunch and I got the answer I wanted from them “Energy”. Now the next question to them was how the robots will get their energy, and their came the 1st topic of my session in picture i.e. “Batteries” .Then I empathized the concept of batteries, their applications, types, shapes, polarities and the symbol of it.

My next topic was on electricity and current, so I gave a real life layman example to the class, A tap connected with a pipe and a bucket and discussed the observations on turning the water tap on/off.

To my surprise, a student named Arsh who was the most silent kid at the beginning of the session, has now started answering my questions and he was actually getting the links between the concepts and real life examples, faster than others!!!  He was now grasping the physics phenomena’s   with more interest.  In the example I gave, the analogy of water tap with switch, pipe with conducting wire, water flowing in the pipe as electric current and bucket getting water with tube lights/fans in the class, I got answers of each connection from the students themselves..

80 minutes theory sessions are enough to saturate the learning potential of students, so I planned a learning game cum class activity for them. I named the game as “CONNECTION ON”, and selected few students, made 1 of them to act as SWITCH & another to act as BULB and the rest were a part of connecting wire between the switch and bulb. Pressing the switch and connecting the bulb to wire, all of them holding hands i.e. connected, makes bulb glow, similarly pressing the switch but the wire end not connected to the bulb, i.e. hands of light and last wire student not touched, makes the bulb not glow. I asked students to think about various such cases and draw a table on blackboard. Hence, the class was learning too while playing the game…and the theory class was no long a boring one.

The best part on completing the session was, when the students demanded for robotics period more than 1 day/week. It assured me that the efforts I made were fruitful.

Behind all this, one thing I am gratefully paying a THANKS to my TGS Team, for selecting me for this job and believing in me that today I myself became aware of this hidden talent that was in me.

What I Experienced Is The Most Pleasing Job Satisfaction, One Could Have Ever Felt.

Puja Ojha (Team Ahmedabad)

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