Sciensation Young CEO Summer Camps - Siddharth Tripurani

Some of the most famed technological pioneers, those who brought a revolution to the industry of phones and computers, were college dropouts. Yet they were able to picture seamless designs and bring these mental images to life. Business boomed and it was the start of the technological revolution of the modern world. These were business models which revolved around a technological idea. These are the companies which helped defined the direction of our world. So what better way to prepare children for the future than by making them start from the right page from the past?

Sciensation held summer camps across Hyderabad for the duration of one week. Various children were divided into teams and instructed to come up with a business idea revolving around some sort of technology. They were then required to come up with a business plan, not limited to a minimum viable product, sales pitch and predicating possible challenges. These terms when viewed individually may have rather simple meanings, but when they are learnt in an integrated manner, the true power which these concepts have is understood. This is what Sciensation aimed to instill in the children who attended the program. Ideas such as a full-fledged clay cooling system to replace conventional air conditioners and help make the costs incurred by households more viable to ideas such as an automated honking system to reduce noise pollution and increase safety were thought off.

The olden day image of classes being taught would be imagined to be a teacher sitting under a large banyan tree with children spread out in its massive shadow listening attentively. This personalized method of teaching was mimicked within the summer camps as the facilitator guided the children through the various thought processes such that they could come up with a final idea with their own skill and original thoughts. Learning the basics of a business is certainly not an easy task, but when one understands before they learn, it becomes twice as effective. Numerous examples, trial runs and clear cut explanations helped bring all the children at par to a surprisingly adequate knowledge base.

At the end of the week long summer camp, all the teams met in the Sciensation office located in Banjara Hills for a program in which teams would be placed in a Question Box and an Answer Box. This is a method devised such that children could improve and develop their own ideas with the help of other students in the form of questioning. Teams would present their ideas as much as possible and it would be the audiences’ job to try to find anything they could question. This would lead to further elaboration and improve the level of discussion and the idea itself. What happens when students are questioned by other students? This sort of questioning which occurs between peers allows students to not only think on a larger scale, but figure out how they should convey these new thoughts in an understandable manner. Communication is a skill which is essential to any millennial and it is only enhanced when the practice happens between the right people.

At the end, parents and facilitators were treated to improved ideas and confidence levels from all the teams as they had gone through hours of questioning and discussing. There is an explicit sense of satisfaction when a team is able to explain at such a level where no one can question their presentation. And that is exactly where all the teams of this summer camp are headed. PS: The Author Siddharth Tripurani is a 11th grader, one of Sciensation’s youngest interns (Journalism) and summer camp facilitators, he had taught two students (grades 2,3) and had observed the Socratic Dialogue competition before writing the article.