Schools, while being places to learn and improve one's academic acumen, are not always known for being sites to interact with professionals from various fields. They may engage children in various activities, but what about gaining insights into the professional space at a young stage? Surely that's an essential element in education, particularly in this cut-throat world full of competition. Addressing just that concern comes Camp Inspire, an event wherein individuals who took unique paths to follow their passions, despite the obstacles will come together to inspire the next generation of learners. It will be conducted online from June 3 to 5 by IIT Gandhinagar for students of Classes VIII to XII, along with parents and teachers as well.
Professor Jaison Manjaly, coordinator of the event and Jasubhai Memorial Chair Professor at IIT Gandhinagar, lets us in on the idea behind the Curiosity Lab's camp. He attributes the camp's guiding force as deviating from the norms of rote-learning in classrooms at schools. He says, "The idea of Curiosity Lab has been to conduct these camps for school children and teachers to generate inquisitiveness in certain areas, which otherwise they would not have thought about. In the normal curriculum at schools, people don't get to discuss things beyond the routine framework. We want to expand and share the fun of learning by getting to know people from different domains. We want to inculcate the sense in children that there isn't always a straightjacketed way of going about one's career."
Professor Jaison explains the rationale behind choosing the speakers for Camp Inspire. He says, "The reason we have chosen people from diverse fields is to inform the students and teachers about the vast possibilities beyond just STEM fields. We want people to pursue a constraint-free path in the disciplines they are really passionate about. We have also chosen speakers who are at different stages of their careers with some being very experienced while others are at the budding stage of their professional lives. People participating will get to know about what these speakers were doing at different stages of their lives."
The camp would also involve a contest on filmmaking organised by Keerthi Raj BS, IITGN Experience Project Fellow. "We also included a filmmaking competition to avoid the event being a monotonous interactive session. So we wanted to have some form of hands-on activity as well. The person who would take that session is someone who pursued a career in filmmaking after dropping out of his undergraduate programme at IISER. We thought that such stories also need to be cherished," adds Professor Jaison.
When asked about the work being done at the Curiosity Lab in IIT Gandhinagar, Professor Jaison explains, "We are conducting research to find out ways to inspire creativity in students and to know the factors influencing it. These would include contextual as well as cognitive factors. One example of research is how breathing exercises might affect the levels of curiosity. Or how language acquisition can make one learn faster. These are some of the research topics we are currently dealing with at the Curiosity Lab at IIT Gandhinagar."
