Speakers

Abstract:

Center for Creative Learning, a lab at IIT Gandhinagar dedicated to create content whic can engage and inspire. Using hands-on activities, real life explorations, CCL focuses on making curriculum that students can relate to. in summer of 2020 CCL conducted an online weekly program 3030STEM. The focus of the program was on basic conceptual understanding and introducing computational thinking in an engaging and hands-on manner. Starting from vegetables, bicycles, cards to A4 sheet paper, the 2 series with a total of 26 episodes uncovered the beauty, magic, and mystery that is all around us.

About the Speaker:

Manish Jain spends most of his time investigating the science behind simple toys and is passionate about sharing his insights and excitement with people. He is Associate Teaching Professor at IIT Gandhinagar and heads CCL whose goal is to bring back the gleam in the eyes of students and children. Before founding CCL, Manish worked at IUCAA’s Science Centre in Pune, with Padma Shri Arvind Gupta. In his previous avatar, he spent 19 years in the area of chip design at Synopsys (Bangalore & Mountain View), serving as a Director of R&D. Manish has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur (1993) and has also finished a few courses at Stanford University.

Abstract:

In the past 5 years, Puerto Rico has experienced several catastrophic natural and anthropogenic disasters. Design Thinking and Data Science has made it possible to overcome many dire situations. Nowadays people are experiencing the power of computing and computational science like never before. It is creating a divide in our society because of the lack of access to internet and a high quality education in Computer Science for many. In this talk, I will share a story of empowerment from Puerto Rico after Hurricane María as well as my story about how Data Science was responsible for my returning to get a PhD in Computer Science and how I use it now to attract more Latinas to Computer Science.

About the Speaker:

Patricia Ordóñez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras. She received her B. A. in Hispanic and Italian Studies from Johns Hopkins University and both her MS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Her doctoral research centered on using visualization and data mining (visual analytics) to improve the state of medicine in intensive care units. Since coming to Puerto Rico, she gained an interest in assistive technology and human computer interaction to create a spoken programming language for people with limited mobility in their hands as well as biomedical data science. She is the co-PI of an NIH grant named Increasing Diversity in Interdisciplinary Big Data to Knowledge for developing Biomedical Data Science in Puerto Rico and also of an NSF grant titled Interdisciplinary and Quantitative Biology Research Experience for Undergraduates to bring undergraduates in Biology to PR in the summer to do research in interdisciplinary data science. Through these grants, she is integrating computation into biology courses, developed an introductory data science course and is developing an interdisciplinary data science capstone course and certification, and fomenting biomedical data science research at the UPRRP.

She is passionate about making computer science more diverse and inclusive and engages in outreach to increase access to all K-12 students to a high-quality computer science education.

Abstract:

This workshop introduces participants to an inclusive pedagogy of disseminating the CS Pathshala Computational Thinking(CT) curriculum for children with visual impairment (VI) called Project VICT. We present the Ludic Design Approach (LDA) and its use in engaging with children with visual impairment in Grade 1 to Grade 3. Participants observe the play process developed so far, join the play, provide recommendations on designing innovative inclusive techniques. The workshop proceeds in five parts in which we: Play two icebreaker games on Foundations of Numeracy; Adaption of the CT curricula to inclusive VICT play plans; Observe online play sessions with children, covering three curricular areas and identify the learning areas covered; Evolution of VICT over three years; Bigger picture of LDA and the road ahead.

About the Speakers:

Supriya Dey is the Co-Founder and Managing Trustee of Vision Empower, a not for profit incubated at IIIT Bangalore, engaged in implementation of Project VICT – CT for persons with Visual Impairment with support from Microsoft India. She is also the co-founder of Vembi Technologies, which makes assistive technologies for students with visual impairment. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from IIEST, Shibpur and a Master’s by Research in IT and Society from IIIT Bangalore. She has an experience of more than two decades in the IT industry.

Manohar Swaminathan is a Principal researcher at Microsoft Research India. His current research in accessibility is built around Ludic Design for accessibility. a new methodology which puts play and playfulness central to all technology solutions for accessibility: Computational thinking for children with vision impairments, multi-modal interfaces for digital skilling of children with disabilities, and the use of spatial audio to enable people with vision impairments to enjoy AR/VR systems, smartphone games to enable data collection of Indian Sign Language, are some examples of ongoing research.

He is also a founding co-convener of the Center for Accessibility in the Global South at the IIIT-Bangalore. Manohar is an academic-turned technology entrepreneur-turned researcher with a driving passion to build and deploy technology for positive social impact. He has a PhD in CS from Brown University, was a Professor at the Indian Institute of Science, co-founder of PicoPeta Simputers and Strand LifeSciences and has advised, and angel-funded several technology startups in India.

Abstract:

Starting from roots in the late 1960s, exposing young people to the ideas of computational thinking has emerged as an important theme in preparing them for effective citizenship in the information society. Beyond just exposure to ideas, we’re now seeing how students can use those ideas to improve life at the personal level, the community level, even the national level. This empowerment through computational action results from the past decade’s developments in mobile computing, cloud services, Internet of things, and machine learning, which bring the world’s most powerful computing tools within the grasp of even beginning learners. As educators, we have the responsibility to make our students aware of these possibilities, and we have the opportunity to help our students mature as empowered citizens in a world increasingly transformed by information technology.

About the Speaker:

Harold (Hal) Abelson is Class of 1922 Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a Fellow of the IEEE. He holds an A.B. degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. degree in mathematics from MIT. Abelson leads the development of MIT App Inventor, a major focus of the MIT Center for Mobile Learning. App Inventor, originally started by Abelson when he was a visiting faculty member at Google Research, is a Web-based development system aimed at making it easy for young students -- or anyone -- to create their own mobile applications. In 1992, Abelson was designated as one of MIT's six inaugural MacVicar Faculty Fellows, in recognition of his significant and sustained contributions to teaching and undergraduate education. Abelson was recipient in 1992 of the Bose Award (MIT's School of Engineering teaching award), winner of the 1995 Taylor L. Booth Education Award given by IEEE Computer Society -- cited for his continued contributions to the pedagogy and teaching of introductory computer science -- and of the 2012 ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education, and winner of the 2011 ACM Karl Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award. Abelson has played key roles in fostering MIT institutional educational technology initiatives including MIT OpenCourseWare and MIT DSpace institutional repository, and he has served as co-chair of the MIT Council on Educational Technology, which oversees MIT's strategic educational technology activities and investments. He is a leader in the worldwide movement towards openness and democratization of culture and intellectual resources. He is a founding director of Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, and the Free Software Foundation, and a former director of the Center for Democracy and Technology — organizations that are devoted to strengthening the global intellectual commons.

Abstract:

Most of the 700 million teenagers everywhere in the world already have their own smartphones, but comparatively few of them have access to PCs, laptops, OLPCs, Chromebooks, or tablets. The free open source non-profit project Catrobat allows users to create and publish their own apps using only their smartphones. Initiated in 2010, with first public versions of our free apps since 2014, Catrobat currently has more than 5 million users from 180 countries, is available in 50+ languages, and has been developed so far by almost 1,200 volunteers from around the world (“the world”). Catrobat is strongly inspired by Scratch and indeed allows importing Scratch projects, thus giving access to more than 84 million projects on our users’ phones as of September 2021. Our apps are very intuitive (“rock bottom”), have many accessibility settings, e.g., for kids with visual or cognitive impairments, and there are tons of constructionist tutorials and courses in many languages. We also have created a plethora of extensions, e.g., for various educational robots, including Lego Mindstorms and flying Parrot quadcopters (“the sky”), as well as for controlling arbitrary external devices through Arduino or Raspberry Pi boards, going up to the stratosphere and potentially even beyond to interplanetary space (“the sky”). A stitching extension and flavor allowing users to code their own embroidery patterns for clothes is available under the name "Embroidery Designer". Catrobat among others intensely focuses on including female teenagers. While a dedicated version for schools is being developed, our apps are meant to be primarily used outside of class rooms, anywhere and in particular outdoors (“rock bottom”, “the world”). Catrobat is discovered by our users through various app stores such as Google Play and via social media channels such as YouTube as well as via our presence on Code.org. Sharing, remixing, and collaboration is actively encouraged and supported. Catrobat has a very long term perspective in that it is independent of continuous funding and actively developed in a test-driven way by hundreds of pro-bono volunteers from around the world. Our aim is to grow by a factor of thousand and reach a billion users by 2030. We warmly welcome new contributors in every imaginable field and way with open arms. Please join us and contact me via wolfgang@catrobat.org today!

About the Speaker:

Wolfgang Slany is a full professor of computer science at Graz University of Technology, Austria. Wolfgang's passionate about poverty alleviation through coding education for teens, in particular girls, refugees, and teens in developing countries, directly on their personal smartphones. Wolfgang's Catrobat non profit free open source project since 2010 develops educational smartphone apps that work in a sustainable way also for teens in less privileged regions who do not have access to PCs and laptops, by relying on the phones most teens everywhere on Earth already personally own, and by bypassing traditional school pedagogy, instead using a constructionist approach focusing on game app development and fun. Professionally, Wolfgang is doing research and teaching on sustainable large scale agile software development and user experience topics for mobile platform projects. Wolfgang has been awarded more than 20 prizes and awards, including Huawei's HMS innovation award for the best app in Europe in 2020.