Innovators showcase unique exhibits at Maker Faire festival

15 students from Junior and Senior Schools were selected to showcase their innovative designs at the Maker Faire international festival on Saturday 10th - Sunday 11th November at Hitex Exhibition Centre, Madhapur. Maker Faire is an international festival to showcase, celebrate and inspire innovation and maker communities. Academy projects that were selected included a water purifier created by Junior School students, and a solution to the world’s ocean garbage problem devised by Senior School students.  

Maker Faire is an initiative by the Government of Telangana Ministry of Information Technology along with the think tank NITI Aayog, aimed at bringing in a culture of innovation into every aspect of society, focusing on K-12 and university students, as well as adults in the start-up space. It featured a unique mix of cutting edge technological explorations, hands-on making and innovative start-up initiatives. People from all backgrounds gathered to learn, share, and get inspired to be makers themselves.

Led by Alish Vadsariya, a group of students presented a solution to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and explored ways in which plastic could be decomposed or be converted into fuel. "This was a very unique experience as it is rare for high school students to get exposure to new and simple inventions done by students from all over the world," said Alish. "We were visited by many people whose criticism and feedback helped us to reflect on how we could actually implement our ideas in the real world and ways in which we could tune our invention so that it is more efficient and has more impact."

Students of grade 3 and 4 visited the event and presented on the green screen (grade 4) and water purifier (grade 3) that they had made. Our whiz kids were able to explain their projects with gusto in front of a huge audience. Students were mesmerized by different projects on display at the event which incorporated principles of robotics, engineering, art and design.

“This is the first time I’ve been to such an unusual exhibition,” says Alishan of grade 4. “The best part was controlling a car which was made up of recycled materials.” The exhibition also had exciting workshops on pottery, sculpting, paper circuits, 3D printing, lamp making, and kalamkari printing. There were life-sized installations at the festival, like the metal unicorn, kinematic puppet, virtual cycling, and graffiti.

"I was in the space allotted for budding innovators," says Jina, economics faculty and chaperone. "There were school kids showcasing how to avoid sound pollution by replacing horns with soothing music (from a playlist that their app allows you to download), and an incinerator to dispose waste by using the principle of light waves converging through a magnifying glass. Our own students developed a way to detect harmful minerals in through detectors fitted in a simple portable water bottle. The passion behind each description and the sense of ownership of their devices was THE thing that caught my attention the most. The whole place was abuzz with an aura of creativity, ingenuity and originality. It was captivating to watch how our successors are gearing themselves with solutions for problems in the future (guiltily I realised, many of which were posed by us, the preceding generation!)"

This was the first Maker Faire held in India, and Telangana’s Secretary for IT Jayesh Ranjan, was present at the inauguration. "Given an opportunity to nurture talent everyone can become an innovator, a maker,” he said.

Contributed by Mita Mohapatra & Jina Saha