Isha Home School

Guest Interaction with Researcher-cum-Artist S. Jayachandran

July 12, 2017

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11-Jul: Senior Students had the opportunity to dialogue with Shri S. Jayachandran, a researcher-cum-bharatanatyam artist who is passionate about art and its history. He started his career as a Software Engineer with Wipro, before transitioning into the Arts. He was an Assistant Professor at Kalakshetra and headed its Research and Documentation Department during which time he explored and expanded the existing knowledge base of temple architecture and ritual. He currently works as a Lecturer in Humanities at the Center for Exact Humanities, IIT-Hyderabad and is pursuing his Ph.D. in Dance. Given that Shri Jayachandran is versed in multiple topics, the session was more of a freewheeling conversation that was not restricted to any single topic. Students particularly noted his distinctive sense of observation and original perspectives.

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Young Talent Search in Computer Programming & SEARCC 2014

August 11, 2014

IHS sent a team to compete in the Young Talent Search in Computer Programming 2014 conducted by the Computer Society of India. The competition consists of a regional level competition and a final national level competition among the top 10 teams across the nation. The top two teams will represent India at the SEARCC International Schools’ Software competition.

In Tamil Nadu, there are two regional centres – Coimbatore and Chennai. The team comprising – Umesh Dhurvas (XII), Guhan (XII) and Punya Pranava Pasumarty (XI) – competed against other schools that enrolled at the Coimbatore centre. Four programs were given which had to be completed within 2 hours using C, C++ or Java. Our students, completed all the 4 programs successfully within the time limit, using Java.

The team has been selected for the National Level Competition which is scheduled to take place at the end of this month.

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IHS Students Attend NASSCOM 2016

December 16, 2016

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Upon winning the Game Jam Titans 2016, the Video Game (VG) TED students were offered the opportunity to attend a 3-day VG developer’s conference held by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM). The NASSCOM Game Developer Conference 2016 took place between the 10th and 12^th of November, in Hyderabad, during the school mid-year break.

Professionals, from all over the world, usually attend the conference, which provides an opportunity for various budding game developers in India to interact with experts in the VG industry. Many studios attend this conference as well, and each studio has its own booth. Representatives from universities attend the conference, too, and talk to students like us. They advise students about the various careers in the industry. Throughout the day, famous individuals in the industry give talks in the adjacent halls.

We met with Ayman anna on the 9th in Hyderabad. We could not attend the conference the first day, since it was only for professionals. On the 9th and 10th we researched about all the individuals and studios attending the conference to make our individualized schedules. On the 11^th, we arrived at the venue, Novotel Hotel, where we were given our ID cards. We proceeded to the main hall where all the booths were located. Our school had 2 stalls, wherein we set up all our laptops to showcase the various games we had developed in IHS. After 30 minutes, the hall was flooded with guests. Many visited our booths and were quite amazed with our presentations. Some of us stayed back in the booths, while others went to attend the various talks.

Each talk was approximately 1-2 hours long, followed by a question answer session. After we had attended our chosen talk, we would proceed back to the stall and swap with the students at the stall. Some time in our schedule was allotted to roaming around the hall and visiting the other stalls. During this time, I found many cool stalls. Some studios invited people to play their games in their stall. That was our favorite type of stall. The conference ended at 8:00pm that day, and after dinner, we returned to the hotel feeling tired, and crashed the moment we saw our beds.

The second day was similar, but we had a little more free time as there were lesser talks. When we visited the stalls that second day, we got many amazing posters. We also got to talk to many university students, and learnt a lot about the best universities in India. We spoke to a few individuals who were running studios; one of the studios even gave Harsshavardhan and myself an internship offer after graduation! The event concluded around 6 that evening.

Overall, the trip was a great experience. We learnt things we could not have learnt elsewhere. We also learnt what it takes to be in a VG studio, and what challenges developers go through to produce those discs that we see in stores.

– Sai Shekhar

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Assembly with Dr. Shubhangana Mukund Atre, an archaeologist

September 9, 2016

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A special guest Dr. Shubhangana Mukund Atre had an interactive session with the Middle School and eighth grade students on the 17th of August. She is an archaeologist and has worked at the Harappan sites in Gujarat and Maharashtra. She has an M.A. in Sociology, an M.A. in Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology followed by a doctorate in Archaeology for her thesis entitled Harappan Religion, from the University of Poona in 1986. She has written the history textbook for grades 5 and 6 which were published by the Maharashtra State Bureau of Text books. She has also submitted about 40 research papers on history and archaeology in various newspapers and magazines. Until very recently, she was a lecturer and a Research Assistant. She was involved in excavation, exploration, sorting and analyzing field data and teaching courses in Ancient Indian History and Archaeology, at Deccan College Post- Graduate and Research Institute, Pune from 1985 to 2010.
Dr. Atre shared with the children her experiences of being an archaeologist. For example, she spoke to them about how she and her team would stay in tents at the sites of excavation and how joyful and exciting it would be when they excavate a bone or a skeleton or a broken clay pot. Surprisingly, the local people around the sites would think that she and her team were miners who have come there to dig gold from the ground. They used to even keep nagging Dr. Atre’s team as to how much gold they had mined so far. Only when they find out that the miners were getting excited about unearthing stuff one would find in an age-old garbage would they start ignoring the archaeologists! The children had a lot of fun listening to Dr. Atre’s anecdotes about her smart professor. It was a fun learning experience for the students and they look forward to more such sessions on what they study in their classes.

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Warhorse MUN Workshop

July 14, 2016

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From 1^st to 3^rd July, interested students underwent an intensive 3-day introductory Model United Nations (MUN) Training Workshop conducted by Warhorse, a young enterprise whose vision is to make every student a better public speaker. Students explored all the various aspects of MUN-ing (as it is popularly known), including the necessary background history about the United Nations, the UN charter, the Cold war, and the Great wars. The workshop specifically targeted the development of all skills related to MUN – thorough knowledge of UN procedures, research skills, policy/ resolution writing, etc. The three day workshop culminated with a mock-conference, with all participants becoming delegates, each representing a country. The conference focused on finding solutions to the Syrian crisis. The workshop got many students interested in MUN, and served as good preparation for the various conferences that students will be both organizing and attending throughout the year.

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