Changes

* <strong>Describe a great learning experience you had as a child.</strong>

* <strong>Describe a great learning experience you had as a child.</strong>

I was having chat with Walter on IRC when he referred to the Lego movie. The reference to Lego brought back a great memory which I would like to share here. When I was a child, I loved to play with Lego blocks. Once, I had a complex task to accomplish - it was to build a small car. I put several hours and completed it. I was feeling really happy, when I suddenly dropped it and it broke. My father looked at me and said, "Reputation, honor and trust are like these Lego blocks - they take years to build, but one wrong move, and everything vanishes in an instant." I looked back with determination to build it again, and put few hours to assemble the car. My father then said, "All of these can be build again. But depending on your wrong move, you may have to start from step 0." Although I understood the significance of this when I grew up, I have always kept his words in my mind since the incident.

I was having chat with Walter on IRC when he referred to the Lego movie. The reference to Lego brought back a great memory which I would like to share here. When I was a child, I loved to play with Lego blocks. Once, I had a complex task to accomplish - it was to build a small car. I put several hours and completed it. I was feeling really happy, when I suddenly dropped it and it broke. My father looked at me and said, "Reputation, honor and trust are like these Lego blocks - they take years to build, but one wrong move, and everything vanishes in an instant." I looked back with determination to build it again, and put few hours to assemble the car. My father then said, "All of these can be build again. But depending on your wrong move, you may have to start from step 0." I have always kept his words in my mind as a guiding principle ever since.

* <strong>Is there anything else we should have asked you or anything else that we should know that might make us like you or your project more?</strong>

* <strong>Is there anything else we should have asked you or anything else that we should know that might make us like you or your project more?</strong>

During my bachelors, I used to teach underprivileged students during the evenings. One thing I realized was that it is very difficult to keep them motivated to come to class regularly, student retention was a major problem. While they were excited at first, but slowly the excitement turned into boredom, primarily because they could not see the scope of what they were learning, and the regular black-board teaching was not helping. Once I showed them my smartphone and a game, they became crazy. At that point, I realized how technology can be an effective medium to develop applications that can help students learn. While going through the various organizations, I came across Sugar Labs and how it was developed for one laptop per child netbook. And when I read about the current project, I could feel students enjoying and playing with web technologies. My interests and thoughts match closely with the project, and I feel that the project itself has a lot of potential.

During my bachelors, I used to teach underprivileged students during the evenings. One thing I realized was that it is very difficult to keep them motivated to come to class regularly, student retention was a major problem. While they were excited at first, but slowly the excitement turned into boredom, primarily because they could not see the scope of what they were learning, and the regular black-board teaching was not helping. Once I showed them my smartphone and a game, they became crazy. At that point, I realized how technology can be an effective medium to develop applications that can help students learn. While going through the various organizations, I came across Sugar Labs and how it was developed for one laptop per child netbook. And when I read about the current project, I could feel students enjoying and playing with web technologies. My interests and thoughts match closely with the project, and I feel that the project itself has a lot of potential.