Stem Education: The Need For It To Be Experiential And Inclusive

The National Science Day is celebrated every year on 28th February in India to mark the contributions of scientists towards the development of the country. On this day, in 1928, Indian Physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman made an important discovery in the field of spectroscopy, which was later named after him – the Raman Effect.

As a part of observing this day, Vision Empower conducted a fireside chat from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm (IST) via Zoom. The speakers for the chat were Dr Procheta Mallik, a trustee of ISPF and Mr Kartik Swahney, co-founder of I-STEM.

The fireside chat began with a warm welcome and introduction of the speakers by Supriya Dey, co-founder of Vision Empower (VE). This was followed by a discussion by Mr Kartik and Dr Procheta who shared their backgrounds, educational qualifications and their work experience in the field of making Science inclusive and accessible.

The fireside chat that was attended by over 70 participants was followed by a round of questions from the audience for the speakers to answer. Sylvia Veeraghavan, the programme manager of VE later talked about the various activities VE conducted on the day displaying a speech prepared by students on CV Raman, announcing the online Science Quiz winners and also talking about Project VICT (Computational Thinking for Visually Impaired).

Vidhya Y, co-founder of VE then thanked the speakers and audience while sharing her insights on how a future collaboration with these organizations can further make STEM accessible, inclusive and affordable for students with disabilities.