Day One 2015

After four flights, and 1 and a half days of travel, I have finally reached Chandigarh! From here it's about a 2 hour drive to Kasauli. Today my plan is to set-up the Pis and explain the basics of the course. I want to go through the parts of the Raspberry Pi and really explore all of its functions. If we have a decent internet connection, I want to show them the intro video from the Raspberry Pi foundation.

It was around 9:00 A.M. when I reached Kasauli so I still had the whole day ahead of me. I first headed straight to the Upper School. After talking to my two main points of contact at the school, a physics teacher and a computer teacher, we decided that my first class would be held that afternoon. I had a whole new set of 9th and 10th grade students (6 girls and 4 boys) to teach. I was going to stay in the nursery-4th grade school campus again, and then hike to the Upper School every day. On my way up to the lower school, I ran into these really friendly cows.

After breakfast, I went exploring. It amazes me how different life is in a little village in rural India compared to where I live in the Bay Area. We take so much for granted living in a privileged society in the Silicon Valley. Life is so uncomplicated here. Some houses don't even have gas ranges, they use tandoori ovens (a cylindrical clay oven used for cooking or baking) to cook all their food. It's such a simple and beautiful place.

After lunch, I had my first lesson of the year! It was very interesting to meet a whole new set of students. We went through the basics today, including what a Raspberry Pi is, what it does, the importance of coding and computer science, and how this program is beneficial to them. We set up the Raspberry Pis and talked a about a python shell, the command line, and the graphical user interface (GUI). We used the python shell from the command line to talk about variables, strings and print statements.

kasauli = "town" print kasauli print "kasauli"

It's actually quite amazing that only one student out of the entire class had ever eaten a raspberry. They all seem very excited to be a part of the class. They are less shy than the less class, and were willing to hesitantly answer a few questions I presented at the ends. Over here in my school in California, we are urged to speak up and talk about our opinions. In Saraswati Niketan, as in many other schools across India, students are told to be quiet and not question the rules. I'm looking forward to changing this and getting the students to ask for clarification or for help. I'm psyched for a great week with these great students!