One child was searching on youtube “how to make robots”. I asked him to try without youtube, he expressed “I do not know”. I asked “If you are on an island and there is no internet then what? Will you not learn anything if youtube is not available? He looked at me puzzled and said again “but I do not know how to make?”
I invited him to travel with me on an imaginary journey. What will your Robot look like? What would be the size? What all it will do? Where all it will go? Initially he was reluctant and his answers were “I do not know”. soon he started participating “10cm long”. I asked how long is 10cm? He said “I do not know”. We took a scale and measured and drew a line…he said no, not this long….we drew 5 cm, he said not this long…we drew 7cm, he exclaimed “this is the size”.
Then we started pondering over shape. He began with I do not know the size…then he said “circle”. We drew a circle of 7cm. Then we moved to ”how fast the Robot will run?” We looked at the vehicles outside….none of the speed matched with his imagination of speed of his Robot. We measured a distance and then he walked that distance to find speed of his Robot, by the time one more child joined to help us with measurements…..we continued.
I tried asking him how Einstein would have imagined without youtube…
Sometimes wonder ‘over usage’ of any one resource – Recently we had Sunday Sadhana at campus on “digi medium” Few kids also took part in the discussion. I think it is not about playing video games, but only playing video games for entertainment is something we need to reflect.
I find Youtube, Internet wonderful resource, but my worry is over usage of one kind of resource – it kills creativity. So the same with books or hands on work…so I am not against youtube or books but raising my concern on becoming dependent on youtube (one medium) to find solution for each creation, each learning.
Often adults are in dilemma “accept the over usage of digital medium (phone, i-pad,youtube etc) or restrict it”. At Aarohi, we find playing around with both approach beneficial. When kids start looking at as restriction, they start desiring it more…we loosen our approach. This is not the time to restrict – simply because the child is not ready., We accept him/her with gadgets and comfort “no issue in liking the gadgets”. At the same time expose to other different things – reading, making, doing, places, cooking, talking etc. With some kids we also have some time fixed (say 55 minutes) to do something different. So instead of restricting ipad/video games/youtube, we introduced time for ‘doing’ together or alone.
Last month at I-campus we began withWhen we started resource collection for various topics. Initially most of the resources were coming from the website. After 1 week, we pushed them to think beyond websites and even sometimes not giving laptops, this move made them to look into various books and lots of kits have come out during this process. Now though website links do come but we also have different set of resources.Some children are working on how to integrate different materials available in their topics.