Everybody seeks out new experiences once in a while, and so did I when I moved to a new place: California. It began with exploring my neighborhood, hiking in the Redwoods, trying out new food, and not to forget the picturesque drives to the few of many beaches in the Bay Area.
It is quite common to hear people talk about the one true passion of their lives. But, I have many passions and one of them is my love for teaching. For as long as I remember, I have always loved sharing knowledge and experiences with people of common interests. I have volunteered for a few of the Non-Profit Organizations in the field of education, environment, and technology. Here I was, in a new place, trying to find the right platform to continue my passion for teaching. Oracle Education Foundation turned out to be the best fit for my volunteering experiences in the USA, and I could never have asked for a better way to get started.
Oracle Education Foundation offers a set of courses to one of the public high schools in Redwood City called Design Tech (d.tech) High School throughout the year. Oracle and d.tech have similar mission statements, and their partnership provides a new gateway for Oracle employees to share their experiences with the young minds of Silicon Valley. Thus started my first stint in coaching and mentoring students of dTech in ‘3D Design and Production’.
Day 1: Introduction
The day began with an introduction to the course, the coaches, the instructors and the plan ahead for two weeks. I was intimidated on the first day because I had never interacted with American high school kids. All my student interactions at Carnegie Mellon University as a Teaching Assistant was with people my own age. Trying to connect with the high school kids looked daunting initially. Although the ice-breaker activities were targeted to bring coaches and students together, it didn’t quite help me get to a comfortable start.
Day 2: Field Trip to Computer History Museum
The entire group of high school kids with coaches and instructors took a field trip to the Computer History Museum. This was my first time at the museum and I was more than excited (maybe more excited than the kids because some of them had already visited this place).
The section ‘Revolution: The First 2000 years of Computing’, particularly — the evolution of storage devices, intrigued me. In addition to that, I loved the Ada Lovelace’s featured-display, and not to forget the autonomous car Waymo display.
Day 3: Interviewing the Girl Scouts
Each group of d.tech high school kids had to interview two 9-year old Girl Scouts with the goal of making their lives better. This was the most interactive day of all the previous days combined. My team seemed confused in the beginning with no direction as to how to interview the Girl Scouts. But as we started jotting down the preparatory questions, things got better.
The glowing moment was when the two 9-year old girl Scouts walked to our table. The interview style became impromptu, and the discussion segued into questions for which we needed their opinions. The girls were so excited to talk about their experiences related to their favorite things, hardest encounters, small adventures at camping events, etc. At the end of the 30-minute interview, we not only had a wonderful time with the girls but also had well-documented notes for our later analyses.
Day 4: Batman keychain
Since I could hardly help my team with the 3D Design tool for the previous few days, I went home and boot-strapped myself with the basic functionalities of the tool (Onshape). I was able to model a small keychain (of Batman!) with the tool in just 3 hours. I later realized that my entire team, who were not so comfortable with the tool just like me, had also learned how to use it and had delved deeper into their personal design projects. One of the team members was so adept at this new tool that he guided the rest of the team in their designs and also helped me fix one of my design issues!
Learning from the kids and in turn sharing my insights with them was the highlight of the day.
Day 5: Defining the Problem Statement
The guest speaker for the day was Jason Lopes, Chief Designer at Carbon. He is the man behind the suit design of Marvel Iron Man movies. His talk was so engrossing that it left all of us in awe for Jason as well as to the entire technology of 3D printing. It opened new windows into the world of 3D printing in the fields of cinema, fun, and entertainment.
The next half of the session was focused on defining the problem statement for the Girl Scouts. My team reviewed the documentation of the interview we had with the Girl Scouts and came up with the problem statement on how to improve their lives.
Today’s activity not only required design thinking about the challenge but also empathizing with the girl scouts. I also realized that it is close to impossible to get the entire team of 4 people to focus on these tasks on a Friday afternoon!
Day 6–7: Working on the 3D design
On the next 2 days, we worked on ‘Ideation’, where we came up with different ways of solving our problem statement. The team listed as many ideas as possible to enrich the soccer-playing experience of the Girl Scouts. Since the list of ideas crossed 30 in just 30 minutes, we had to categorize all of them under major areas of — entertainment, bringing joy, and solving their everyday problem. We then narrowed down our problem statement to a specific area and finalized on 1 design to get started with. The team divided the entire project into small tasks and assigned themselves these tasks and deadlines.
Day 8: My Coach Pop-Up and After-Party
Every day one of the coaches talked briefly about themselves at the sessions and it was my turn on Day 8!
The kids were interested in knowing about how I chose my career, which is what I had focused my entire talk on. High school is one of the confusing parts of our lives, where we have to decide on a major, and consecutively finalize on the list of colleges one has to apply to. By sharing my experience of choosing my major and designing my career, I felt that I did the best I could to guide the kids into their fields of interest.
At the end of the session, there was a small party for all the coaches, instructors and teaching assistants. To my sweet surprise, I discovered that the ThinkQuest competition I had participated during my undergraduate studies was sponsored by Oracle Education Foundation’s Colleen Cassity! It was fun meeting her in person and sharing my story with her.
Day 9: Cupcake Day and printing the 3D models
One day to go for the final exhibit and we had to get the final design printed on a 3D printer. The team was ready to present their solution.
In the meantime, we had an amazing array of cupcakes with Oracle Education Foundation and d.tech’s logos.
Day 10: Final Day — Exhibit
The final day involved all the teams demonstrating their 3D design models. This exhibit was open to all d.tech school kids, their parents, and Oracle employees.
3 things I learned in 2 weeks:
3 things I learned in 2 weeks:
Build perspective: It is relatively easy to make a group of people the same age understand a concept, and communicate clearly one’s ideas. But add in a bunch of kids of different ages — freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and the same above-mentioned tasks become difficult.
So I got to their level of understanding concepts, looked at the problem in their viewpoint, and learned to communicate my ideas so that they could comprehend. This helped solve the design challenges quicker and better. It’s all about perspective!
No Micromanagement: There were days where my team needed a push in the right direction, and I had to jump in and lead the project. But on most of the days, I learned how to let things unfold and take its own pace by taking a back seat.
I personally believe that people are generally capable of self-learning new technologies. All we have to do is to show them the right direction and get out of their way. I thereby realized that I did not micromanage.
Mentor & inspire: High school is a confusing and stressful part of our lives. I remember, during my high school days, I was not sure of what major I had to choose. And also, the taxing years of juggling school work, coaching classes, and college admission tests.
By talking to d.tech high school kids, I could relate to how similar their situation is with mine a few years ago. I am glad I could guide them through the obscured part of their lives, and I hope I inspired at least one student with my story.
- For those of you who are interested in Oracle Education Foundation, here’s more info: https://oraclefoundation.org/index.html
- A must visit — Computer History Museum: http://www.computerhistory.org/planvisit/
- Learn 3D design on a collaborative platform: https://www.onshape.com/videos/topic/tutorials