Brooks Brainery, the global edtech organisation founded by a high school student of Salt Lake School last year, is preparing for its second month-long online summer workshop and this time they promise to go bigger and better than the first edition.
Aishik Biswas, now a Class XII student, had started Brooks Brainery last year to provide free online courses to high schoolers from around the world. From June 17 this year, they will hold their second round of summer workshops via the video calling software Zoom.
“Besides subjects of liberal arts, physics, mathematics and computer science, we have options in business management and law. The Spanish course — Journey to Spain: language, culture and geography is a new addition this year and is filling up out faster than the rest,” says Aishik, a resident of Sunrise Point in Action Area IIC .
“Previously we had 25 course instructors who were students with some teaching experience from different universities from around the world. This year we have gone for only 12 as organising 25 courses was a logistical nightmare,” Aishik says. “As all of us are volunteering, we don’t have any earnings through this. We can’t afford the required technology to do more at the moment.”
Psychology and business subjects seem to be filling out fast among students while mathematics and physics are the least enrolled subjects. Aishik feels this is because students prefer to learn something other from their regular school curriculum through summer workshops.
Admissions have closed for this season but students had to apply on the website www.brooksbrainery.com. Between 20 and 50 of them will now be selected on the basis of a screening process that includes submitting an essay. Along with education, the chosen students get to join fun events like trivia nights and game nights. They will get to socialise freely in some open Zoom meets too.
Brooks Brainery, the brainchild of Aishik, along with the help of Karan Kishore, a student of Northeastern University, Boston, and their team, has made a mark over the past year and entered the second phase of the TV show Shark Tank India.
“I had butchered my academics last year trying to manage both Brooks Brainery and my studies but now, with the right time and energy management, I am doing pretty well,” Aishik shares.
“I look forward to continuing the work as we are thinking of conducting a winter programme, free SAT courses and from next summer we want to start the camp in offline format and give even more time and effort to it.”
What online course would you like to pursue this summer? Write to The Telegraph Salt Lake, 6 Prafulla Sarkar Street, Kolkata 700001 or email to saltlake@abp.in