Learning by Making Story: The Community Problem Solver
Nitin Sharma
27 Aug, 21 · 5 min read
Meet Shreyas Pange, a young innovator who developed a solution to improve the yield and income of fruit farmers while he was in grade 8th.
One day while talking to his grandfather he found that the traditional method of plucking fruit from trees is not effective and requires much effort. He also observed that the all fruits available with a fruit vendor is not ripe. When he asked the vendor, he told that it is difficult to differentiate between fruits when they are the tree.
The problem solver inside him wanted to do something about it and hence came the idea of making a smart fruit plucker. With his design he wanted to reach a height with minimum effort and also detect whether the fruit is ripe or not.
Smart fruit plucker design (Source: Youtube/Arundhati Jadhav)
Shreyas’s smart fruit plucker has two: hardware and software. To cut the fruit he required a lever mechanism and a wedge, which he found in a scissor. To operate the scissor at a distance (without directly holding it in a hand), he used the brake mechanism from his bicycle. Smart Shreyas, right!
He mounted these two along with a collection bag on a long bamboo stick which s light in weight and strong to hold some quantity of fruits. He also deployed and programmed a colour sensor to detect the ripeness of the fruit.
Before creating a prototype, Shreyas researched about horticulture and different categories of fruits being grown in his region. He explored what techniques are bring used to serve this purpose. He then learnt about different sensors, coding and fabrication to build the prototype.
To further improve the solution, he is now planning to build a mobile app that will be connected to the hardware. He also will created another version for bunch type fruits as well.
Shreyas worked with his mentor in their Makerspace to design this solution. By doing this project Shreyas learned so much about science, technology and the process of design thinking. Every child must get such opportunities to apply their learning and practice to become an active contributor of the community.
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Makershala is a Learning by Making ecosystem for kids from age 8-16 to help them discover their interests, develop future skills and deepen conceptual understanding. Makershala follows the Project Based Learning approach as its way of teaching in which kids work on authentic, real life & personally meaningful projects.
Kids work on these projects in different educational settings, namely; self-learning; online 1:4 Peer to Peer with a mentor; or in a school. Projects are categorized in different interest segments like Robotics, Coding, Electronics, 3D Printing, Animations, Photography, Machine Learning, Astronomy and many more.
Each project is mapped with classroom concepts, 21st century skills, UN sustainable development goals and interests/careers to not only focus on holistic development of a child but help them identify their calling by giving them exposure to problems that exist in the real world.
Why Project-Based Learning
Project-Based Learning has the potential to solve many of the learning problems we see today beyond foundational literacy.
Ownership: Learners have complete ownership on what they need to know to solve a problem and come up with the best solution in the best way. It can be a concept or a software tool or a skill. Kids involved in projects are never required to be told to study.
Interdisciplinary: Unlike traditional learning where subjects are taught in silos and learners develop a perception of liking or disliking a subject. In project based learning, the given problem is supreme and it may require to know something from maths, science and history together.
Experiential learning: We generally retain 75% of what we do as opposed to only 5% of what we hear and 10% of what we read, hence PBL helps kids retain what they learn.
Lifelong learning: The most important gift that PBL gives to its learners is to make them lifelong learners as this is the most required skill to lead a good life, personally & professionally.
Skills & Knowledge balance: Project-based learning doesn’t focus too much on memorizing information, rather it equally demands practising life skills to be able to do better in projects.
How Makershala Works
Parents and Kids who wish to start their journey with Makershala, are suggested to pick one interest area of the child and then choose a plan.
Parents and Kids after enrolling in a course based on their interest are assigned a batch. Each batch has 3-4 learners and 1 mentor.
Each course has 6 guided projects and 1 challenge project.
During the project, formative assessments are conducted to evaluate learner’s knowledge & skills.
On completion of a project parents and kids get a learning report which indicates the skills and knowledge developed/displayed by them.
Kids also build their portfolio which showcases problems solved, solutions created, skills developed, knowledge acquired and technologies learnt.
Kids earn rewards in the form of badges, points and coins for their performance in a project, course and overall.
Kids are maneuvered to take up courses and projects from different learning segments to gain more clarity on their interests. This eventually helps them in picking up a career.
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