Education
13 Y.O Indian Girl is Educating Teachers Worldwide, Wins Nadella’s Applause
Ever heard of a 13-year-old contributing to the teaching method of a school? If not, meet Namya Joshi, a 7th standard student of Sat Paul Mittal School in Ludhiana, India.
Ever heard of a 13-year-old contributing to the teaching method of a school? If not, meet Namya Joshi, a 7th standard student of Sat Paul Mittal School in Ludhiana, India.
Young Namya, who has been helping the teachers of her school make class lessons interesting through Minecraft, managed to impress Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, at the ‘Young Innovators Summit' recently.
Namya’s mother, Monika, who heads the IT department of the same school, had the educational version of the application Minecraft installed on her laptop. One day, she found her curious daughter working on it, that she managed to learn through exploration and tutorials. “I’d seen Minecraft installed on my mother’s Windows 10 laptop and started trying it on my own. After understanding the basics, I watched some tutorials and got myself familiar with it,” Namya says.
Namya was later instructed by her mother to produce her next lesson on Minecraft and after seeing the results, the latter was convinced that Minecraft can be used in a school setting to make things more interesting for the teachers as well as their students.
After getting the green light from the Principal of the school, Mr Bhooinder Gogia, both Namya and her mother began working on creating lessons on Minecraft which turned out to be an instant success in different classes.
One of the primary responsibilities of any school is to prepare children for the future. Ludhiana is a tier two city in Punjab and if my students can’t go out and get exposure, I want technology to bring the world to them. We partnered with Microsoft and became a Microsoft Showcase school.
– Bhupinder Gogia, Principal, Sat Paul Mittal School
The journey of Namya as an educator for the teachers took off immediately and since then she’s already trained more than 100 teachers around the world, including the teachers of her school. Currently, the young one has her YouTube channel and a blog.Namya has clearly made a name for herself as she collaborates with educators around the world frequently.
At the recent Young Innovator Summit held in Delhi NCR, where more than 250 educators and children were present, Namya shared the stage with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadela, who was highly impressed by the 7th standard student. He said, "We need to reformulate the relationship between technology and learning. It is very interesting to witness the way young innovators think today."
Story and image courtesy: Microsoft