Interactive session with the students of Gyeonggi Suwon International School
10th, April 2015
IIT Alumni Association, Korea (IITAA-Korea) in association with Gyeonggi Suwon International School (GSIS) has done a pilot project with the students of grades 10, 11 and 12 on April 10, 2015. The idea was to bring the technical and professional expertise among the members and mould them in to simple insights for the high school students. As a pilot project we chose the topic of “Problem Solving” as the theme for the first session and the following piece is a short summary of the event.
As a part of our outreach and community based events we got in touch with teachers at GSIS exploring various options on how we (IITAA-K) can contribute constructively. Out of much such conversation came the idea of having a session or open dialogue on “Problem Solving” which IITians are famous worldwide. Taking this as an opportunity we the office bearers took upon ourselves the task to experiment this mode of outreach.
On the afternoon of Friday, April 10th around 12 students, 5 teachers and 4 office bearers got together in the classroom in GSIS just after the school hours. There were equal number of boys and girls and being an International School there was no trouble communicating with any of them.
As a part of our outreach and community based events we got in touch with teachers at GSIS exploring various options on how we (IITAA-K) can contribute constructively. Out of much such conversation came the idea of having a session or open dialogue on “Problem Solving” which IITians are famous worldwide. Taking this as an opportunity we the office bearers took upon ourselves the task to experiment this mode of outreach.
On the afternoon of Friday, April 10th around 12 students, 5 teachers and 4 office bearers got together in the classroom in GSIS just after the school hours. There were equal number of boys and girls and being an International School there was no trouble communicating with any of them.
Jalaj Jain started the session bringing in his entrepreneurial and professional experience to the discussion. He highlighted the importance of strategy, experimenting fast and failing fast and deciding on your goals and directing resources in that direction. It was followed up by Vishnu Vinjam who illustrated few problem solving strategies by the STOP-THINK-ACT-EVALUATE framework and did a live example on “Math difficulty” with students participation.
Next came Subhojit Chakladar who crisply summarized his insights in the form of three stories from his life. He talked about the need to learn from the past, stand out and make place for oneself in this world and the idea of comfort zone and transcending its boundaries. Pankaj Agarwal backed everyone up with his three golden rules for success, to report to oneself, to always stay positive and to know he/she is special. It was followed by a brilliant 7 minutes video of World Speaking Champion Dhananjay Hettiarachchi.
This short 45 minute presentation was followed up a very lively Q&A session with questions from both teachers and students. Topics like importance of arts in a STEM based education, design thinking and effort vs intelligence in success were discussed. The session ended with a small token of appreciation from the school to the members of IITAA-Korea.
We followed up with the school authorities for feedback and are happy to hear very positive feedback from students and teachers calling it highly relevant and insightful. They have proposed having similar such sessions in future and we from IITAA-Korea are working to formalize this relationship and take this collaboration and outreach forward.
This pilot project was a huge success and has provided us with a framework for all community based activities in future, banking on the strengths of the members in the group and gearing it to the needs of the society outside.
| Article about the event in the GSIS Cornerstone Magazine |