This week was happening. It was an emotional roller coaster ride for me. I was in constant stress about Nidhi’s Job and overall decision of moving to pune. We will be able to survive or not. Choosing alternative school to work means low salary, long working hours.. Are we taking the right step? or should we leave our passion and just join a high paying opportunity ? Will we be able to find an affordable house or not..

On the other side communication - coordination with parents about engagement planning is going on. They are not happy that we are moving to pune without any financial security.

Yesterday Nidhi went to Pune for interviews and visited a few alternative schools. I am praying, hoping something will work out. Over friend Nirmala is getting enage on 12th so we are planning if we can attend the function while coming back from Pune.

WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING

—> Review meetings at BeMe (25th to 28th March 2024)

• this week most of my time went to review meetings at BeMe (Review meeting happens at the end of the semester when parents come and sakha faculty and child share about ‘how was the semester for them, challenges and next years plan’. No marks or report cards but faculty share their detailed observations about the child. I was with Archna’s sakha group meetings as note taker)

—> Holi (26th March 2024)

—> Dinner at Aditya’s Place (27th March 2024)

• Me & Nidhi went to Aditya’s place for dinner. We watched two episodes of a sci-fi series called ‘Three body problem’. (I want to continue watching it but Nidhi told me that we will watch it together so I am holding it right now)

—> Meeting with Anand Chitipothu (28th March 2024)

• On thursday I met Anand Chitipothu at Indian Coffee House, Church Street. I read about him on yourstory - Techie Tuesdays - 2014.

After I redescoverd about Aaron Swartz recently I was remembering other techies in this ethos. I remembered Anand’s website because of its unique name ‘anandology’. I visited his website and surprisingly I found that he worked with Aaron on an infogami, Open library project and he contributed to the Web.py framework.  I immediately emailed him that I want to meet you. He promptly replied and we met.

I was part of a python elective course on python at beme. And I have been exploring scratch since 2013. so I wanted to talk about teaching programming to children. I wanted to talk about his work with aaron and open source world in general

- Teaching Programming to children  

What we have talked :  

• Teaching Programmer mindset instead of only programming tools or language , learning programmer’s mindset through origami / paper folding
• we talked about his exploration with children at CFL and other schools, Practical computing course
• His exploration in math, geometry , doodling in math class
• limitation of MIT Scratch

- Introducing concept of FOSS to children

• he said we should not start sharing examples of software or linux if we want to introduce the open source world to children. We should take any daily life problem and solve that problem with children and that’s how we should introduce..

• He said in India the concept of sharing, concept of community is different. So it is a little difficult to introduce the open source world here.  

• He mentioned Rishabh Mehta who is running his software company democratically and also runs democratic school in Mumbai

- Internet Archive and Aaron Swartz

He shared how he joined Aaron and how he connected him to an internet archive.

- At the end

He shared something called ‘Coldblooded software’ and publishing tool called Quarto

I shared my idea to make a solar powered low tech website and he promised to help me with that :)

—> Call with Ashwathi (28th March 2024)

Ashwathi joined youcan recently. She is helping them to do campaigning for new cohort launch of earth educator fellowship regarding that she is taking interview of Earth educator fellowship alumina and sharing their journey on social media we had 1hr call and I shared all the work I did during one year of fellowship

—> Sleepover at BeMe (29th March 2024)

• on 29th there was an all age group BeMe sleepover. During the daytime children made special arrangements for my and Nandini’s farewell event. They prepared cards, special journals with all their best wishes and messages, they got us white t-shirts and all the children wrote their messages on that…samosa  - jalebi :)  It was very touching for me
• During the sleepover at night me and Nidhi sat with 12+ children at the upper gazebo and shared our love story.. how we met.. we played beyblade together… we promised that we will visit beme once in a year.

—> APU Campus Recruitment Process with children (30th March 2024)

• Next day morning me, Prakash, Julie and two children (Avantika and Hari Sai) went to APU for campus placement. To find new faculties for BeMe. During casual conversation at night we shared with children that we are going to APU for an interview, they got interested, they said we will give you questions - and you need to ask them.  They came up with some 20 questions. Finally we decided to take them with us. It was wonderful experience for us and the team at APU to see children in the recruitment process.

—> Interview questions prepared by children

—> Pranav Mistry

• After coming back from APU I spent some time watching ‘Pranav Mistry’s talk at his school in Palanpur - Gujarat’

—> Music

• From morning I am explore my old fevrout music - advaita band, indian ocean band, cock studio, aditya gadhvi, priya sariya - varso