Environment Sensor Workshop for Children at ODCBLR2016

Its been a long time dream to involve children with DataMeet activities. We just conducted a Data journalism workshop with children. In this Open Data Camp which is basically our yearly get together we wanted to get them started with environment sensors. Planning started a bit back, but we did change the plan quite a bit in last one month.

It was fun and involved. Picture credit: Meera.

Initial plan involved to build a sensor with some ability to save and send data to internet. But we had to cut down our plan to make it into an introductory workshop and the rest would go to an advanced workshop. This was our introductory workshop. All the details of the workshop is on the GitHub if you like to use it in your own or want to improve.

We roughly had 10 kids (including two young adults). All curious and ready to start. I must say kids were much smarter than I thought. They have been using computers since they were five or so. But I think this would be very different if we involve kids from different segments of society. That's probably our next goal.

This is what each kid got as part of their kit.

I am working on the advanced workshop plan. It would probably involve couple of advanced sensors, display and internet. That way by the end of advanced workshop they should have a working and practical sensor kit. I am also working on lunch box based packaging. I will keep you guys updated.

Huge thanks to

1. Sriram Reddy and SensorsWithoutBorders for helping to plan workshop and in general sponsoring ODC
2. Pallavi Pant- For all the tech and planning inputs related to the workshop
3. Nisha and Anjana - Helping me shopping, planning and packing
4. Prakhar, Rajath and other volunteers
5. Raghu Shenoy and Oorvani - for helping with kits
6. ReapBenefit - Helping us to reach kids
7. India Open Data Association for donating sensors for the next workshop and in general sponsoring ODC

Update:
Just got an email. Makes me happy. More reasons to work on the advanced workshop..

I wanted to reach out to you regarding the phenomenal experience my daughter and I had at the Kids Data Meet yesterday ! She was all praise for the volunteers – in her own words “They answered my questions and made me think that I could really build the circuit for the sensor ” J

In addition, she wanted to mail the postcard that Thej had put into her sensor starter kit. Can you please let me know the postal address so that she can mail it across ?