Madam Curious
Madam Curious is the work of a bunch of idealists making an honest
attempt to improve the way science education is imparted to young
children.
With our videos (and soon to be launched app), we aspire to wow kids
with the beauty of science, and how it affects every little aspect of
our daily lives. We want them to start thinking about it as a powerful
tool to solve the world's most challenging and important problems, rather
than a mere subject to be learnt in the confines of a classroom. In all
our earnestness, we want to instill a strong scientific temperament in
children.
Madam Curious is free to use for teachers, parents, children,
everyone. It is ideal for teaching middle-school children, and is designed
around topics and concepts taught in a typical Indian middle-school curriculum.
Our Videos
Science is at work all around us, in every little thing we do or see.
Through the centuries, great scientists have observed these little
things in their day to day lives, and questioned "why?".
The answers they have discovered, or invented, have powered our
progress up to the present day.
In keeping with this spirit of curiosity, our videos explain scientific
concepts through short "slice of life" films, depicting curious children
going about their daily lives, unearthing the magic of science in what
we may otherwise think of as the most mundane and taken-for-granted things.
Currently our videos are in household Hindi, using English words for technical
terms. We are working on providing subtitles in English and various Indian
languages.
All our videos are on YouTube, organized into ordered playlists that tackle
various topics and slowly build on previous videos. Here is an example:
Our App
In addition to the videos, our app will let learners interact with the
friendly Madam Curious, our very own science teaching "bot". We have
built many hours worth of interactions that will serve to reinforce
and deepen the concepts taught in the videos.
As with the videos, we plan to provide these interactions in Hindi, English
and various Indian languages.
Creators
An education system that often rewards rote learning goes against a
strong understanding of concepts, and inhibits the development of
critical thinking & problem solving skills.
This is really unfortunate, because these very qualities will be necessary
for today's children looking for fulfilling careers in the years to
come.
We are a passionate team of people who want to help nurture and build thinking
and problem solving skills, early enough that they become ingrained forever.
Madam Curious the result of building, rebuilding and refining our learning
content and its delivery mechanism based on a lot of feedback from educators
and early users.
Saumya V Kanoria
Cornell University, U of Illinois Urbana Champaign, computer scientist, entrepreneur
Vivek Dadu
IIIT - Allahabad, ex-Microsoft, teacher by passion
S K Amarnath
Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, NIT - Karnataka, computer scientist, software architect