Why physical outreach?
SFRI – Science for Rural India is a group organized by students at IISc. The main aim of SFRI is to enrich science education in rural areas. Several teams are working under SFRI, among which the “Physical Outreach Management” team focuses on going to schools in rural areas and encouraging scientific thinking and the ability to come forward and ask questions and participate in discussions among the not-so-privileged students.
Why should you be interested?
Visiting not-so-privileged schools will help you
- Understand the reality of basic science education at school levels
- Enhance your teaching skills
- You might have to face diverse situations in schools which will enhance your public interaction skills
- It will be a fun outing for a day outside your lab, done for a good cause
- We will provide TA certificates upon completing four outreaches which will add up to your CV. Nonetheless, you can come for one outreach too!!
When to start, frequency, strength, team, arrangement
- We are planning to start the outreach program as early as from the first week of August. Till now the plan is to go on every alternate Saturday but depending upon the response from volunteers it can be made every weekend.
- The number of students you can expect in the schools is from 40 to 60. At present, 7th to 9th class students are focused on, but that can vary depending on the models you shall be presenting there.
- The session shall be conducted for for a maximum duration of 6 hours (including journey) depending on the distance of the schools in and around Bengaluru (maximum 120 km from IISc).
- We are planning to send groups of 3-4 members to each school. At least one of the group members will be from SFRI for smooth functioning on the day
- KSCST (Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology) will decide the school to visit for the outreach and will also arrange the transportation. Physical outreach members will coordinate with KSCST and the volunteers for the execution of the program.
What the volunteer has to do:
The volunteer can choose date(s) and topics (on which SFRI members have already prepared models and video recordings are available in our YouTube channel) from the google form we will be attaching in the mail. You can also go to the YouTube channel of SFRI to see the experiments carried out by the members.
How shall we execute the program?
The Physical outreach management team will contact you regarding the execution of the experiments. You will have to come for a practice session a day or two before the journey. In that session, physical outreach members will guide you through the procedures you must follow on the day. If you do not show up for the practice session, you lose your chance for this time.
How should the session be?
On the day, we will reach there with your model of preference. Let’s say your experiment has four models. First, you have to set up the models and let the kids observe and play with them, without you explaining. Then you may ask the kids what they think might be the reason behind it. After that, you can explain. The idea is to generate curiosity