Thinking creatively to give children in India meaningful learning opportunities at home

Pi Jam Foundation is a non-profit organisation based in India, equipping students and educators with tools to learn and create with technology. Pi Jam has been committed to ensuring that learning continues during the coronavirus pandemic. 

We want to share some of the amazing work that Pi Jam has done to support young coders and volunteers. 

Connecting with WhatsApp 

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the digital divide more than ever. Pi Jam started to think about how they could still provide a learning experience for their Code Club members who were now learning from home, often with limited connectivity and hardware.  

Pi Jam decided to send computer science videos and worksheets of unplugged activities through WhatsApp! The response from Code Club members was amazing, and you can see some of the projects they completed (in Telugu) in the image below. 

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“While there are a lot of high-quality unplugged resources, we realised the need for making contextual content relevant to the needs of the students we work with. Hence we started creating unplugged content in-house so that students have a seamless learning experience.”

– Pranjali, Pi Jam Foundation

Doorstep learning 

Yashoda, a Pi Jam instructor and Code Club volunteer who lives in rural Parbhani, Maharashtra, found curious students showing up at her door wanting to learn! Yashoda wanted to keep teaching her students, and following the local public health guidelines on social distancing, she started to teach in small groups, using a basic Raspberry Pi setup. 

Yashoda supporting young learners

Pi Jam had this to say about Yashoda: 

“We are proud to work with Yashoda, who has evidently not seen her context as a limitation, using this opportunity to innovate her instruction in a way that makes her budding problem-solver students proud.”

Pi Lab goes live! 

Pi Jam Foundation runs a programme called Pi Lab, and the team has been providing live online computer science sessions for students from various partner schools (government and low-income schools) in Pune, Maharashtra. The students who have joined this online learning experience are aged 10 to 14 and had previously attended a face-to-face Code Club before social distancing measures were introduced.

Pi Lab said this about the sessions: 

“For most of the students in these sessions, it was their first-ever experience with creating using computing skills, and it has been incredible to witness and encourage their inquisitive minds.” 

Stay connected 

The work of Pi Jam Foundation is just one inspiring example of how Code Clubs across the world are staying connected with their members during these extraordinary times. Share with us how you have been staying in contact with your Code Club on Twitter at Code Club UK or Code Club World and use the hashtag #MyCodeClub.

Want to find out more about Code Club in India? Contact Divya and Vasu, who are happy to chat with you about the Code Club community in India.