This blog is written by Tashi from The Apprentice Project
A week before the sprint I found myself looking at a spreadsheet with some delight and a good amount of surprise. Why? My name read as an attendee for the Tech4Dev Education Cohort Sprint at Dehradun, at this point I was trying to make sense of it as a work conference, a networking event, or a recreational event. Maybe I have an answer for this now. It was a super event with all the elements of work, recreation, community building, and collaboration. 

Flagged off my sprint with a quick round gaze of the lush green and picturesque campus of The Sal Woods, filled with calm and tranquility, murmuring “Go out there, have an open mind, and engage with the community”. An awesome exercise conducted by Tejas got us connecting effortlessly. Expressing our first impressions, expectations, wins, and challenges marked the start of the wonderful and productive time ahead. 

The same evening I resonated with a concern expressed by Mr. Rishi Majumdar from Quest Alliance regarding students bouncing from one platform to another in their learning process. My interest piqued on seeing the solution that is being developed by Quest alliance and ooloi labs to counter this issue and develop computational thinking in due process. I wanted to dive deep into this, Rishi was very generous with his time and all the help offered in getting a good overview of it.

Before the sprint I was working on onboarding some new tech resources for my organization The Apprentice Project and was always on the lookout for the ideal approach that one should follow, I was inspired by the interaction I had with Ms. Vandana Vasudev from Bhumi and their use of technology, I would like to express my gratitude for all the resources that were exchanged and look forward to an exciting collaboration in the schooling space. A very similar possibility of a collaboration headed towards me when Mr. Rahul Bangar from VOPA generously offered to incorporate the TAP’s socio-emotional learning curriculum within their V-school platform to widen its reach. Collaborating on strengths seemed so very enterprising and am eager to take this up with my manager and pursue it further. 

Evening work sessions were usually followed by recreation activities two such mentions would be a short hike in the vicinity that helped me connect with folks on a personal level, get a closer look into their journey in this sector and explore possibilities of collaboration, and exchange learnings from their experiences. Folks pumped up, geared and ready to face the brunt of the rain made our trip to Mussoorie all special. Wandering cluelessly through the mall road admiring the local crafts displayed on shelves we made our way to Little Llama’s cafe for an absolute cracker of a time that overshot our stay but we made it back in time.

I would like to extend my gratitude to the Glific team for having us at the sprint and for creating a space that helped us connect, explore and initiate collaboration with each other. A special thanks to Mr. Lobo, Kurund, Erica, Abhishek, and Mohit for helping me understand this initiative, its roots, and the motive going ahead. I had an amazing experience at the sprint and am already excited and looking forward to the next one.