The Tinkering Lab at NCL Innovation Park has been arranging a “Math Gaming Club” workshop for a while now. I have been part of these workshops [in minor and major capacity] for the last couple of years. It’s always fun to interact with the kids, especially the younger ones. They never cease to amaze as well as amuse me. The existing school curriculum and pedagogy really fails to teach the beauty and essence of mathematics; in fact, it rather creates an intimidation about the subject. At “Math Club”, we endeavor to create those [otherwise missing] “Aha” moments in an intellectually and creatively stimulated environment. The interaction with the younger kids, their bubbling enthusiasm coupled with innocent naivete is refreshing for me with my otherwise brutally spartan routine [thanks to my two startups]. And this year was no exception, we just finished a ten-day long workshop last Friday. We usually expect kids from 10 to 18 years of age to attend the workshop but this year we had one 8-year-old girl who was quite excited about the workshop. And to our surprise she did extremely well in almost all the sessions. Perhaps we should allow more younger ones to participate from next year.

I was carrying my DSLR on Tuesday as I wanted to take some photographs of bacterial samples among other things. I had a half-an-hour break in between so I took the opportunity to shoot a few candid moments while kids were intently listening to Manjushri ma’am during origami session. Here are few of the pics [Note: I was not covering the entire session or trying to frame everyone. If you want to check the official coverage, please check with Sayali at sayali@web.venturecenter.co.in].

You can navigate with arrow keys and click to check the larger version on flickr.