Doing and Living: An Accessible Science Camp by Vision Empower

National Science Day is celebrated in India on February 28th each year to mark the discovery of the Raman effect by Indian physicist Sir C. V. Raman. To celebrate the spirit of science, we decided to conduct a science camp for students with visual impairments we work with.

This idea was birthed when the VE state coordinators came together to share their favourite memories of doing science. All the coordinators agreed that the science exhibitions displaying their summer break projects were the best part of the school. We decided to pass on this joy to the children we work with by creating an accessible and fun Science Camp.

As a non-profit working to make STEM education accessible, our objective behind this initiative was to support the teachers and students in their experience of science by demonstrating a model of accessible, experiential science learning.

After numerous brainstorming sessions, we decided to divide the science camp into three major parts: simple experiential science learning activities, a science quiz and a scientific cookout. The VE coordinators then reached out to various schools we work with to get an idea about their interest in participating in the accessible Science Camp.

A total of 8 schools from 4 states showed enthusiasm towards us conducting the science activities and sessions. These schools were:

IEPVD School for the Blind Boys, Tripura
IEPVD School for the Blind Girls, Tripura
Govt blind school, Davanagare, Karnataka
Shri Manik Prabhu Academy for the blind, Raichur, Karnataka
Higher School for the Blind, Palayankottai, Tirunelveli.
Govt Middle School for the visually impaired, KK Nagar, Madurai
TELC School for the Blind, Tirupathur, Sivagangai Dt.
National Association for the Blind, Uttarakhand

Throughout all these schools, we prepared the students of grades 5 to 7 for the science experiments by dividing them into groups of 4, briefing them about the science experiments process, and providing them with the materials required for conducting practice sessions from the 22nd to 25th February 2023. This gave the children adequate time to understand the concepts behind each activity and demonstrate it confidently on the science day i.e 28th February.

The children and teachers of all the schools appreciated this initiative and expressed their interest in more such sessions at regular intervals of time.

Our grade 3 students from Tripura shared, “As a student of IEPVD, I know that teaching science experiments to visually impaired students like myself can be challenging, but you all did an amazing job. Your creativity and patience in finding ways to make science experiments accessible to us were truly appreciated. Your use of audio descriptions, tactile materials, and verbal explanations helped me and my classmates understand the concepts and engage in the experiments while having fun.”

One of the teachers from Uttarakhand expressed, “On behalf of NAB Uttarakhand family I would like to express our gratitude towards the Vision Empower team who allowed our students to express their views and thoughts through experiments which were conducted on the occasion of National Science Day. The event was successfully conducted and all the children actively participated in the activities and thoroughly enjoyed them.”

We are grateful for the enthusiasm displayed by both students and teachers towards the ‘Doing and Living: Accessible Science Camp’ and we wish to take this experiential learning initiative forward in the coming months.