How she hosted a Technology Festival in her school in Ayodhya?
Giving experiences to young students of Riding Hover-boards and flying Drones
The Untold Story of School Innovation
TUS | EdMonks Friday Post | Edition 1 | January 2023
Nowadays, people in school do not even consider hosting a Tech event as innovation because there are dozen-a-dime tech companies that are willing to do cliche events for schools for FREE
So what was different here?
The first was to get students to ride Hoverboards, fly Drones, make online apps, play with LEDs, explore Artificial Intelligence in day-to-day activities, print designs on a 3D Printer, and much more
the second was that the speakers were not coming from generic tech companies.
and most importantly, the vision of the school principal who hosted this event.
I am going to share the story of this School Leader, who put together this first-of-its-kind event in this small but historically important city in eastern Uttar Pradesh
Wouldn’t you like to know more about her and why she is different?
It was 2022 and Rakhi Gibrani got the opportunity to lead this K12 school in Ayodhya, in Eastern Uttar Pradesh as a Principal.
This was technically her second job as a leader and she was now in this seat for more than 7-8 months
By now, she had already led an affordable private school for 4 years in a rural area in Haryana.
But you see, this time it was different.
This school was one of the largest schools in this city and the expectations were very high.
One day she called me to ask
“What kind of innovative things should I focus on so that the city looks at my school as an inspiring one?”
I instantly got into the shoes of Jaamvanta and suggested,
“Play on your strengths”
She has a history of being a first mover and a ladder.
Earlier in her career as a computer teacher, she was among the pioneers who worked on CS First, a program by Microsoft
, and her students won international awards
So organizing such an event should not have been a challenge for her.
Rakhi has many strengths and one of the biggest of them all is that she is a very good listener.
I just suggested to her that she should start with a Tech Event and she should do it for the whole of Ayodhya and not only for the students of her school.
My rule is simple
If you want to grow the brand of your school, become the big brother of all the schools in the city.
Rakhi exercised her understanding of tech and her network to put together a 3-day event in her school
Where the students who have never seen a hoverboard were riding one
Students who never saw drones were flying them
Students who never thought they can code were building apps to play with LEDs using MIT App Inventor
Students were learning about Design Thinking and Artificial Intelligence
And much more was happening in this 3-day event.
You see, when you have a network, you can accomplish amazing things.
And since she was hosting it for the first time in such a small city,
all the resource persons helped her in their might and did not even ask for any compensation or fee
The school was just supporting their travel and stay expenditure.
And she was able to invite a researcher from IIT Patna for hoverboards, Drones, and 3D Printers, a speaker from the corporate for design thinking and Artificial Intelligence, and a person from the higher education space who helped the students with App making.
It was a blast and the event was talked about throughout Ayodhya and even beyond
What did you learn from this quick story?
You do not dig the well when you're thirsty, you need to start digging it, well before when you are thirsty.
Rakhi could have not gotten these people to build such an event in a matter of weeks
She was able to build the event in just weeks because she knew these people for months or maybe years,
Can you do a huge literature festival at your school?
But of course, you can put together a high-end event, if you have that network with big bash authors
The question is
Are you building your network?
Like Rakhi Gibrani did