Chirping of birds...sound of rain drops...chanting of Om...loud speakers blaring...laughter... Now you can guess the theme of our 7th Science day - Sound. And this time our science day went virtual and global too.
There was meticulous planning involved as the event was virtual and we had set some goals for ourselves:
1. No compromise on student's participation as it is going to be virtual
2. Experience should be similar to what would happen in face to face events
3. Materials used should be available at home and there should not be any necessity for anyone to step out of their homes to buy given the current situation
4. Anticipating all technical glitches possible and have back up plans ready.
And we managed to achieve all these goals. The participation and experience was equally matched with all the earlier science day events. Experiments were chosen to demonstrate the concept of sound, understand how ears perceive the sound, how vibrations could be seen and used to create music, understand various parameters of sound such as loudness, pitch and quality(timbre) , concept of echoes and how do we have fun through string phone. Every student with support from the parents followed the procedure for each experiment as demonstrated by Mirra facilitators.
Several follow up activities were shared to expand their experience on each of the concept being taught. As is our practice, the students will post the videos on the follow up activities.
The pandemic has opened up new avenues that we may not have explored earlier. It has been a wonderful experience right from planning to implementation.