This past year at Unstructured Studio has been less about big launches and more about steady, meaningful steps, showing up in learning communities, experimenting with creative tools, and deepening our practice around playful, accessible learning. As we pause and look back, here are a few moments that shaped our year.

Learning Through Community

We began the year by participating in Team4Tech’s coffee chat, a small but meaningful space for reflection and exchange. Conversations like these remind us why community matters, learning often happens in the in-between moments, through listening and shared experience.

Community of Practice for Education Focused NGOs

EdTech leaders and NGOs/NPOS connect in our Community of Practice, where best practice, technology, and networking accelerate impact.

Team4Tech

Later in the year, we also took part in Team4Tech’s annual fundraiser, supporting work aligned with our own values around equitable education and impact-driven collaboration.

We also reunited with the LLK (Lifelong Kindergarten) community, a space that continues to inspire our thinking around creativity, constructionism, and playful learning. Reconnecting with this community felt grounding, like coming home to shared language and values.

Designing and Experimenting with Creative Tools

A significant part of the year was spent designing and iterating on creative learning activities, particularly around tools we care deeply about.

We developed two hands-on activities using OctoStudio and OpenStreetMap, exploring how creative coding, storytelling, and mapping can come together in accessible, child-friendly ways. These activities reflect our ongoing interest in helping learners move between the digital and physical, the personal and the geographic.

Mapping and Visual Coding: Two STEAM Activities Co-Created with Team4Tech

In early September 2024, we were excited to be selected as part of Team4Tech’s inaugural Volunteer Micro Matching Program. Having previously participated in their community calls [/blog/sharing-our-journey-with-the-global-community-at-team4tech/] and engaged with their mission, this marked a signifi…

Unstructured StudioUnstructured Studio

We also led a couple of workshops around OctoStudio for Amba, working closely with educators and facilitators to explore how creative coding can support expression, storytelling, and learner agency.

In collaboration with Jesse, we worked on localizing a language-learning board game, adapting it thoughtfully for context, language, and use. This process reinforced the importance of cultural relevance and co-design in educational tools.

Jesse Sanderson Design - We Speak!

Want to read more? We Speak! has been featured in the media and presented on at a conference! Teaching English in Tanzania Through Games by Kevin Lavery, MSU College of Communication Arts and Sciences Game developers, professors present benefits of gaming for language learning by Reiel Ghiglia, The

We Speak!

Research, Reflection, and Sharing Our Work

This year also marked an important step in formalizing and sharing our learning through research.

We developed a research paper "Creativity Without Borders: An Impact Study of Unstructured Studio’s Low-Cost Tinkering Approach to Student Learning in Rural India" that was submitted to both IDC and CLC. While it wasn’t accepted at IDC, we’re proud to share that it was accepted at CLC, where we presented our work as a poster at UC Berkeley. The experience of articulating our practice through research, and engaging in dialogue around it, was both challenging and deeply affirming.

We also had the opportunity to present at the Wisconsin Play Make Learn Conference, sharing our work with educators, designers, and researchers who care about playful, hands-on learning. These spaces continue to push us to reflect, refine, and communicate our ideas more clearly.

Recognition and Looking Ahead

One of the most encouraging moments of the year was being accepted into HundrED’s Global Collection. This recognition feels less like a destination and more like an invitation, to keep learning, questioning, and building alongside a global community of educators and innovators.

HundrED Global Collection 2026

Global Collection 2026 celebrates 100 of the world’s most impactful and scalable innovative solutions in education. Together, they represent the creativity, resilience, and partnership shaping the future of education worldwide.

HundrED

Moving Forward

Looking back, this year was about participation over performance, process over polish, and learning in community. We’re grateful for the people, conversations, and opportunities that shaped our work and for the chance to keep experimenting with what playful, unstructured learning can look like.

As we move into the next year, we’re carrying forward the same curiosity: to design thoughtfully, collaborate generously, and continue making space for learning that is creative, grounded, and human.

In early September 2024, we were excited to be selected as part of Team4Tech’s inaugural Volunteer Micro Matching Program. Having previously participated in their community calls and engaged with their mission, this marked a significant milestone for our organization, allowing us to collaborate with them more closely.

Sharing Our Journey with the Global Community at Team4Tech

Team4Tech [https://team4tech.org/], a nonprofit impact accelerator headquartered in the US with hubs worldwide, aims to bridge the digital equity gap in education and create learning opportunities for underserved communities across the globe. We were fortunate enough to be invited by them to present…

Rudrani GhoshUnstructured Studio

Team4Tech, a U.S.-based nonprofit impact accelerator with global hubs, is dedicated to bridging the digital equity gap in education and providing transformative learning opportunities for underserved communities worldwide.

Team4Tech - Team4Tech

Committed to corporate social impact in education? See how Team4Tech’s nonprofit impact accelerator programs and skilled volunteers can help!

Team4Tech

As part of their micro-matching program, we were paired with two incredibly talented professionals: Alex Leigh from Canada and Kani Sengottuvel from India. Their unique perspectives and expertise in STEAM learning brought creative insights into activity development. Together, we co-created two low-cost, STEAM-based activities designed to expand our library of creative learning resources. These activities aim to provide engaging, accessible learning experiences for children while fostering creativity and critical thinking in education.

Over the course of several weeks, we met regularly to brainstorm and refine our ideas. As Alex put it:

A memorable moment for me was the start of the ideation phase of the project. I remember thinking, "if we want the students to get into the tinkering thought process during the project, we need to get into that mindset." From there, we tried to see how far we could take ideas and how creative we could get to encourage the learners to be curious and innovative when doing the activities. This was so memorable because it sparked a new appreciation for creative problem solving and "outside the box" thinking.

Our final choices were two activities: Storytelling with Octo Studio and Mapping with OpenStreetMap. The mapping activity helps students familiarize themselves with their surroundings, while storytelling with Octo Studio fosters computational thinking skills. Here’s an overview of these two activities:

Creating Kathputli Stories with Octo Studio

Kathputli is a traditional Rajasthani puppet art form known for its intricate storytelling through puppetry. This activity merges this ancient tradition with modern creative coding using Octo Studio, a creative platform from the MIT Media Lab that enables users to design digital stories and animations. Through this, students can bring their own Kathputli-inspired narratives to life using visual coding.

Creating Kathputli Stories with Octo Studio

Kathputli is a traditional Rajasthani puppet art form known for its storytelling through intricate puppetry. This activity will blend this ancient form with modern creative coding through Octo Studio, a creative platform that allows users to design digital stories and animations. Kathputli (puppetr…

Kriti ActivitiesKriti Activities

Mapping the Story of a Neighborhood with OpenStreetMap

This activity combines exploring local places with digital mapping using OpenStreetMap, a free, collaborative mapping platform. Participants document their neighborhood’s story by creating a physical map, adding photos and QR codes to highlight different spots, and identifying missing locations on digital maps through collaboration. It’s a blend of hands-on creativity and digital tools, bringing community stories to life.

Mapping Your Neighborhood Story with OpenStreetMap

This activity combines exploring local places with digital mapping using OpenStreetMap [https://www.openstreetmap.org/], a free, collaborative mapping platform. Participants share the story of their neighborhood through a physical map, add photos and QR codes to highlight different spots, and uncov…

Kriti ActivitiesKriti Activities

This collaboration has been an incredible learning journey for all involved. Through our partnership with Alex, Kani, and Team4Tech, we were able to push the boundaries beyond our current “non-technical” focus, incorporating digital tools to develop essential future skills like visual coding and open-source mapping. With storytelling as the common thread, both activities centered around two key tools: Octo Studio and OpenStreetMap.

As Kani shared:

It was truly a great experience, especially learning about the Tinkering methodology and applying it to project ideas and implementation. I’ve gained a whole new perspective on design thinking that I can use anywhere.

In the NGO world, collaboration is a key factor in accomplishing bold missions. Our partnership with Team4Tech felt like two organizations with shared equity-focused values coming together in a way that truly resonated with us.

If you're interested in collaborating on activity development or have similar ideas or training facilitation in this space, feel free to reach out at hello@unstructured.studio! We’d love to explore new possibilities together.

2024 marked a significant milestone for us as we proudly celebrated our fourth year in the nonprofit sector. What began as a passionate weekend initiative by our founders has blossomed into a fully functional organization committed to empowering creativity, learning, and innovation. This year, our focus was on strengthening our foundation, building meaningful partnerships, and expanding the scope of our impact.

We kicked off the year with our first-ever offsite meeting in Delhi to not only set the tone for the year but also lead a memorable collaboration with the incredible team at the Amba Foundation. Together, we conducted a hands-on workshop that encouraged young learners to create projectors from waste materials.

Starting the New Year with a New Workshop in Delhi

We started off 2024 with a STEAM-based workshop in collaboration with the AmbaUjjwal Foundation in Delhi. We had been working with their children in online and offline hybrid mode for a while, but this was the first time all of us were meeting them in person. We began the new year with Unstructured …

Rudrani GhoshUnstructured Studio

Throughout the year, we organized 12 workshops, both virtual and in-person, in collaboration with various nonprofit partners. These workshops spanned diverse topics and formats, providing children and educators with engaging learning experiences. A particular highlight was our second workshop in Nigeria, led by our exceptional volunteer, Ndidi Folasade Ogboi, who brought our STEAM-based activities to life for a new audience.

Beyond the Taboo: Creativity as a Tool for Mental Well-being

Last month, in collaboration with the wonderful team at Tarang Manch [https://www.tarangmanch.in/], we hosted a virtual, hands-on workshop at the intersection of mental wellbeing and creativity. Tarang Manch is a small, education-focused organization with a similar pandemic origin story. They have b…

Rudrani GhoshUnstructured Studio

My first workshop experience as an Unstructured Studio educator

Sometime in April of this year, I came across a post by Unstructured Studio on my LinkedIn timeline. A connection had reposted one of their posts that I found interesting, and that led me to explore their website and watch their project videos. A Shared Passion As I clicked through to the website,…

Ndidi Folasade OgboiUnstructured Studio

One of the year’s key achievements was our selection by Team4Tech as part of their micro-matching pilot project. This initiative paired selected nonprofits with skilled volunteers to co-create impactful projects. We had the privilege of working with Alex from Canada and Kani from India to design two STEAM-based, low-cost activities that have now been added to our Kriti Activities repository. Additionally, our in-house team developed another unique activity, expanding our repository to include three new, innovative options for educators and learners alike.

Kriti Activities

Tinkering, Making and Learning

May we suggest an author? Kriti ActivitiesKriti Activities

We also launched an exciting initiative this year: the Creative Speaker Series. This quarterly series features conversations with inspiring individuals in the realm of creative education, offering fresh perspectives and ideas. In 2024, we had the honor of hosting:

• Nikita Gandhi, a natural pigment maker and artist
• Nikitaa Sivakumar, the visionary founder of Wonder Yonder, an initiative simplifying STEM concepts through visuals
• Suraj Kori, an engineering student and founder of CaressTech, an organization promoting accessible technology
• Nidhi Pal, a passionate nature and science educator

Our team also conducted a study earlier this year to explore how low-cost tools, activities, and resources can support creative learning for children in rural India. Using a structured creativity assessment framework, the study engaged 30 students from grades 4 to 8 who participated in a year-long program with our studio, and the findings showed a notable increase in students’ confidence, idea generation, peer collaboration, and critical thinking skills.

Some students previously had basic ideas for creative art and craft projects, but with the skills and experience gained through the program, they are now empowered to take their ideas to the next level.

Students who were once hesitant to take risks, make mistakes, and share their thoughts now do so with much greater confidence.

2024 has been a year of growth, learning, and impact. As we reflect on our journey, we are filled with gratitude for our partners, volunteers, and supporters who have believed in our vision. With each passing year, our commitment to empowering learners through creativity and collaboration only grows stronger. Here’s to more innovation and impact in the years to come!

Team4Tech, a nonprofit impact accelerator headquartered in the US with hubs worldwide, aims to bridge the digital equity gap in education and create learning opportunities for underserved communities across the globe. We were fortunate enough to be invited by them to present our organization to their community of practice. Moderated by Goutham, Team4Tech’s Asia Hub Manager, and Emily, Team4Tech's Community of Practice Manager, it was an hour of thought-provoking and engaging discussion, filled with earnest questions and quality feedback from several other community members who joined in from around the world.

We spoke about our three-pronged approach—how we engage with children through our workshops on creative learning (Kriti) Activities, upload the projects on ZubHub, and aim to develop the 4Cs of 21st-century skills among learners: creativity, communication, critical thinking, and collaboration. During the session, we explored questions on technologies, partnerships, and fundraising, discussing creative tools for classrooms, documentation and collaboration tools, and the potential use of ZubHub in various educational settings. We also sought advice on improving and promoting such tools, forming successful partnerships and strategies for effective fundraising, and receiving valuable feedback from educators and participants. Our presentation evolved into a lively discussion among all attendees about our work and significantly helped us brainstorm how we should proceed.

Although the field of activity-based creative education is still considered a niche in India, it is gaining traction, as it emerged from our discussion, and we can leverage many opportunities to broaden our reach. The Indian government, as well as several state governments like those of Delhi and Tamil Nadu, have shown keen interest in incorporating experiential learning in classrooms. We are interested in exploring possibilities for collaborating with them and other nonprofits that share our vision to work on the ground.

Another idea that emerged during the discussion was to conduct a needs analysis with other nonprofits and government school teachers and principals to better understand the ground realities in which we want to work. Additionally, we could add more activities to our Kriti Activities repository that align with the established Indian curriculum. While initially developing the activities, we focused on connecting them with concepts of physics, aiming to keep them as creative and open-ended as possible while also teaching kids basic physics concepts. This is definitely a worthwhile avenue to explore and could help us collaborate directly with schools and state governments.

Overall, we spoke about our work, our challenges, and how we work around them. The great ideas discussed in this session will help us improve our work further. We extend our heartfelt thanks to Team4Tech for providing us with the opportunity to present our work and also to the community members who joined and shared their valuable input.

Since its inception, Unstructured Studio has been invested in making STEAM-based creative learning experiences more accessible to the underserved in India. Over the course of nearly three years, we have taken over 30+ workshops, both with children and educators. We wanted to compile some ideas and thoughts for STEAM-related education for K-12 educators to take inspiration from.

Coding for beginners: This is an excellent way to initiate children into coding through Scratch, a free online platform developed by the MIT Media Lab that integrates coding with creativity. Scratch uses a high-level, block-based visual programming language, making it accessible and engaging for children by allowing them to drag and drop code blocks to create interactive stories, games, and animations. Recently, we conducted the first of a series of workshops with the youth at Amba Foundation, introducing them to this innovative platform. One example of an activity we used to engage the children was creating an interactive story. Each child selected characters (sprites) and backgrounds, then used code blocks to animate their characters, making them move, talk, and respond to different events. This activity not only introduced them to fundamental coding concepts but also encouraged them to think creatively and logically. The tool can be explored further here: Scratch.

Smart Textiles: This is another interesting STEAM concept that you can introduce children to is Smart Textiles. They are fabrics integrated with an electronic component for improved functionality for the wearer. Though not commonplace yet in India, smart clothing is used quite extensively in the Western hemisphere through smart hospital gowns, heated socks etc. Smart textiles offer versatile applications across industries such as fashion, healthcare, sports, and transportation. This can become a very interesting activity to facilitate with the learners. For example, they can be asked to create a glowing glove replicating Iron Man’s glove using old gloves and LED lights.

Libraries as agents of change: Libraries can become agents of change in STEAM education by transforming into hubs of hands-on learning and innovation. By offering maker spaces equipped with tools for coding, robotics, and 3D printing, libraries provide community members with access to resources that foster creativity and critical thinking. Collaborating with local schools and organizations, libraries can host workshops, competitions, and events that spark interest in STEAM fields among children and adults alike. For example, an interesting approach is to keep a LEGO set, or a similar building block set, which the children can freely use to create. You can simply ask them to build a specific thing, without giving them any more instructions, and then watch their creations unfold.

Using low-cost resources: In underserved settings, acquiring the materials needed for a high-end tinkering workshop can be challenging. However, creativity and resourcefulness can turn low-cost, readily available materials into engaging and educational projects. Items like cardboard, paper, string, tape, bottle caps, and recycled electronics can be repurposed to create innovative and functional prototypes. For instance, children can use cardboard to construct simple machines, such as levers and pulleys, to understand basic mechanical principles. Paper circuits, made with conductive tape, LEDs, and batteries, can introduce them to basic electrical concepts without the need for expensive equipment. This approach not only makes STEAM education accessible to all but also encourages students to think critically about the resources they have at hand, fostering innovation and resilience. You can find more such activities here: https://kriti.unstructured.studio/

Facilitation tips:

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and STEAM: Instilling resilience in learners is crucial for their success in the rapidly evolving STEM landscape. As AI and other emerging technologies reshape the job market, it's not enough for students to possess only technical skills; they must also develop essential soft skills. These include adaptability, problem-solving, communication, and collaboration, which are vital for navigating complex and changing work environments. By fostering a growth mindset, educators can help students view challenges as opportunities for learning rather than obstacles.

Classroom as safe spaces: It’s important to ensure that students feel comfortable in a classroom and can call it their safe space. You can build classrooms as compassionate spaces through soft lighting, white noises/ soft music, different sensory outlets for students such as building a small zen garden or designating a corner as a “chill spot” where students can relax if they feel anxious, creating flexible seating or having enough space for them to move around and opportunities of self-expression. An example of could be designating one day of the week as a maker day. Students can be given a variety of materials and tasked to make something with them in groups. A few examples would be, aromatherapy candles, beaded necklaces, doodling, building blocks etc. This can help them strengthen their collaboration skills and unleash their creativity.

Introduction and Icebreakers: If you are meeting with your students/ workshop participants for the first time, it’s always a good idea to start with a small round of introduction followed by an icebreaker. You will find lots of good ideas for icebreaker activities, but a few tried and true ones that I always use are getting together a few simple riddles for them to solve, or asking them what they will do if they win x amount in a lottery. The answers that come up are really interesting.

Guide, don’t Instruct: STEAM learning puts the focus on igniting creativity and curiosity among the learners, and making them understand difficult concepts through the process of making, rather than rote learning. To this extent, a good tip would be to guide them through a process, instead of setting clear instructions and boundaries. For example, instead of telling students exactly how to build a specific model or solve a problem, you might ask open-ended questions that lead them to consider different possibilities or alternative methods. This way, learners take ownership of their learning experience, develop problem-solving skills, and build confidence in their abilities.

Last month, in collaboration with the wonderful team at Tarang Manch, we hosted a virtual, hands-on workshop at the intersection of mental wellbeing and creativity. Tarang Manch is a small, education-focused organization with a similar pandemic origin story. They have been working in the Shahjahanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, India, for nearly four years with underprivileged children in the area, many of whom are forced to work in the local peanut factories for daily wages. Despite these peanut factories providing employment to local people, they also contribute to child labor, which is a significant reason for children dropping out of school. Consequently, the majority of the youth in this area do not pursue higher education. As a result, the area faces issues such as child labor, sexual abuse, domestic violence, and substance dependency, highlighting the urgent need for mental health and wellbeing support.

Organizing a workshop on the intersection of mental wellbeing and creativity was a new experience for us. We were delighted when Karan, the founder of Tarang Manch, approached us to conduct this workshop. Mental health remains a significant taboo in many parts of India, and addressing it in an educational setting poses its own challenges. Initially unsure how to proceed, we thought of Astha Sethi, a recent graduate from Parsons School of Design in the US and a friend of our studio, who specializes in mental wellbeing training through creative approaches. Fortunately, she also had experience facilitating similar workshops with elderly individuals in New York.

Even with an experienced facilitator on hand, we were still nervous. We knew a workshop with participants from a remote district would be a different experience altogether. To our amazement and delight, the participants were not only receptive but also openly interacted and communicated. One key measure of our workshop's success is the number of questions participants ask. We were pleased to note that they had many, whether agreeing with us, challenging us, or simply inquiring about various topics.

In this workshop, we were delighted to have educators from various schools in the region, including some Gandhi fellows, join us as participants from Saharanpur. Our workshop began with Astha giving a brief talk on why it is important to prioritize mental well-being and open up about our struggles with others. The highlight of the session was crafting personalized greeting cards. Participants were encouraged to design a card for someone they know well who's going through a tough time to show solidarity and support for them. For those without a specific person in mind, creating a self-care card was also an option. The idea behind an activity like this is to give the participants a tool for self-expression and create a safe space for them to talk about their experiences. We intentionally chose a simpler activity to avoid overwhelming them since this was our first interaction.

We started off slow but soon picked up pace as participants began opening up one by one. What started off as a simple creative exercise transformed, thanks to Astha’s expert facilitation and the participant’s enthusiasm, into a platform for them to share their troubles and joys.

Several participants expressed concerns about lacking motivation, a feeling many of us can relate to. They wanted to understand how they could make their lives, both personal and professional, more fruitful. Managing their own emotions also became an important topic of discussion. Participants talked about how to manage negative emotions like anger or sadness. Interesting answers came from the participants themselves, such as not becoming too negative when feeling demotivated but continuing to do small tasks to integrate a sense of achievement in oneself. Another suggestion was to take deep breaths and start counting from 1 to 100 in your mind when feeling angry.

The session was peaceful and creative, with activities like making greeting cards helping participants feel connected. Although people in our area are often not vocal, the well-designed session provided a safe space for everyone to communicate their emotions and share their stories easily.

– Karan Singh, Founder, Tarang Manch

We could not have foreseen that this workshop would create such an open and interactive platform. Initially, we assumed we needed to tread carefully due to the taboo surrounding mental health in India. However, the participants’ openness and curiosity proved us wrong. This experience demonstrates that creativity can become a powerful tool for emotional well-being, providing a much-needed outlet for expression and support.

Sometime in April of this year, I came across a post by Unstructured Studio on my LinkedIn timeline. A connection had reposted one of their posts that I found interesting, and that led me to explore their website and watch their project videos.

A Shared Passion

As I clicked through to the website, I was immediately intrigued. The showcased projects were more than just creative endeavors; they were solutions to real-world problems. Unstructured Studio was making a tangible impact. What I saw resonated deeply with me, as I had been looking for opportunities to volunteer in education and children's needs. The initiative's mission to empower children through creativity and innovation to solve a pressing problem in education aligned perfectly with my community service goals and I knew I had to be a part of it.

The Workshop Experience

I quickly reached out to their Learning program manager, Rudrani Ghosh, who graciously acquainted me with their team, and I began to plan my first workshop. I took the first workshop at ADS Basic School in Ogbomoso town in south western Nigeria, where I had just finished my First Degree. I had the privilege of working with a group of 26 children. The kids were filled with curiosity when I first told them they could be anything they wanted to be and that the power was solely in their hands. I encouraged them to see the extraordinary in everyday objects—to transform mundane items into art. And they did just that! Simple materials like cardboard, broomsticks, leaves, and used water sachets became their tools for self-expression.

Energy and Enthusiasm

The energy in the room was palpable, and the kids were fully engaged in the activity; they didn’t tire. They created fun portraits in various forms, all from humble materials. Their enthusiasm was contagious, and I found myself equally invigorated. After the activities, it was time to upload their project on Zubhub. For the kids, uploading to the platform was a fun process in itself, as it was their first time operating a laptop; I let them do it their way, and they successfully managed it.

More to Come

For me, this was more than a workshop; it was purpose. Seeing those bright faces light up as they crafted their masterpieces was priceless. I realized that I could contribute to something greater than myself. Unstructured Studio isn’t just nurturing creativity; its initiative builds confidence and resilience in these children, and I commit to this. As I reflect on that day, I know that I will be conducting more workshops in other states, spreading the joy and creativity this initiative embodies. I am excited to see the impact that Unstructured Studio will continue to have on the lives of children, and I look forward to being a part of this journey.

In 2020, ZubHub began as a weekend project, a small endeavor we began without any grand expectations. At the time, we had taken a few tinkering workshops in collaboration with Agastya International Foundation and other smaller educational organizations in Gujarat and simply recognized a need for a platform where STEAM-based tinkering projects could be preserved, showcased, and given a wider audience.

Fast Forward four years, ZubHub now has a reach of 5000 users. Our platform keeps growing, making slow but steady strides in the STEAM community.

This month, we reached an exciting milestone by being accepted to participate in the prestigious International STEAM Summit hosted by Wonder Workshop. Wonder Workshop is an education and robotics startup based in the United States, who hosts the International STEAM summit, a bi-annual virtual summit, where speakers are invited from all over the globe to share their expertise and guidance regarding STEAM education.  

During our 30-minute session, which had 255 registrations, we had the opportunity to highlight some of the unique features of ZubHub, share the inspiration and development process behind our platform, and recount a few heartwarming stories from our field experiences. We also posed some pertinent questions about the platform to educators, encouraging them to consider how they would incorporate ZubHub in a classroom, how ZubHub could revolutionize classrooms, hackerspaces, libraries, and beyond, what existing gaps ZubHub could address in educational settings, and how ZubHub might maximize untapped opportunities in educational settings.

We were featured alongside other amazing talks that spoke about interesting ideas, such as teaching children the concepts of coding without increasing their screen time, STEAM workshops using Scratch and Makey Makey, or how making can help with students’ mental health.

More details about the session: https://spring.internationalsteamsummit.com/talks/introducing-zubhub-your-documentation-collaboration-hub-for-activitybased-learning/

Link to the recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w78VA3J2qQ

If you are an educator or a tinkering enthusiast, how do you envision ZubHub being used in a classroom setting? Email us at hello@unstructured.studio. We would love to hear your thoughts!

We started off 2024 with a STEAM-based workshop in collaboration with the AmbaUjjwal Foundation in Delhi. We had been working with their children in online and offline hybrid mode for a while, but this was the first time all of us were meeting them in person. We began the new year with Unstructured Studio folks dressing up from head to toe in our warmest clothes and arriving at Patparganj, the community AmbaUjjwal Foundation has been serving for the last 25 years.

This time, we had 30 children, ranging from 5th to 8th grade, and we were super excited to meet and interact with them. All the kids belonged to low-income families in the neighborhood and would gather at the AmbaUjjwal community center once or twice a week for after-school activities. Our goal with them was to facilitate the Light Story Box activity (around making an interactive slide projector), have them document it on ZubHub, and explore and understand their reactions when they interact with ZubHub.

We started by showing the children the demo video and inviting them to draw parallels between the activity and things they might regularly interact with in their day-to-day lives.  They immediately recognized that it is similar to the projector they see being used at the centre, and could also connect this activity with movie screens. It was amazing to see how quickly they caught on to the concept and were ready to make their own Light Story Box. In order to foster collaboration, we divided them into two mixed-age groups of around 15 and asked them to decide amongst themselves who was going to create the projector and who would create the slides that would show the movie.

The goal of such an activity is to let kids explore a new, unique medium of storytelling, bring their own creative ideas to this medium, and explore it freely without any constraints on how the final “product” would look.

In the same spirit, we avoided giving them strict instructions and gently guided them when needed, mostly leaving them to their own devices. In the end, both groups finished on time and confidently showcased their projects in front of everyone. The first group chose to depict what their daily life at school is like, and the second group told us the age-old fable of the thirsty crow. We concluded the workshop by having them upload their creations on ZubHub. As this was our fifth workshop with them, they already had a clear idea of what the platform is. Two people from each group used the platform while everyone else circled around and watched.

We could not have asked for a better start to our year. It was lovely working together with the AmbaUjjwal Foundation, interacting with the children in their own space and watching them tinker and build their own creations based on our activity.

“This was a fun activity. I wish that school was also this much fun, but it’s so boring,” says Surbhi, a student of eighth grade located in a village near Patna. Surbhi attended four workshops with us over the period of a year, and we saw her blooming firsthand from a shy, quiet, and self-contained child to a much more confident and self-assured young individual. It was not easy to bring her out of her shell, but steady encouragement, dividing her to be part of smaller groups, and consistently making her document her creations proved helpful.  

This was probably the best compliment we received for our work in 2023. As the year comes to an end, let’s take a moment to pause and look back at all we have done over the past twelve months.

• This year, we focused more on developing long-term partnerships instead of conducting one-off workshops. We are happy to share that we have forged three long-term partnerships with Feminist Approach to technology (FAT), AmbaUjjwal Foundation, and Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion (CSEI), where we took multiple workshops based on our creative learning activities with their learners on a regular basis.
• We conducted 14 workshops this year, through both virtual and physical modes, and crossed the reach of over 15000 learners and educators as the year ends.
• Like previous years, we applied to a few grants and accelerator programs this year as well. We are proud to announce that we have received the esteemed Ernest Solvay grant of 10,000 euros from the King Baudouin Foundation.
• Our online educational tool, ZubHub, our web and mobile platform for activity-based learning, was shortlisted to be on HundrED’s top hundred educational innovations of 2023. Check it out here → https://hundred.org/en/innovations/1-zubhub
• We were selected and funded by Outreachy again this year to work with engineers and designers from countries all over the world. We worked with seven interns over two rounds from Cameroon, Uganda, Turkey, Nigeria, India, and they helped in improving and upgrading ZubHub massively.
• We debuted many new features on ZubHub, such as the ability to create new teams and add creators to a team project with the help of our interns. We also revamped the landing page and overall improved the user experience of the platform.
• One of our interns, Faridah from Nigeria, organized a workshop in the capital city of Abuja. This marks our first step in the African continent. The day-long workshop centered around introducing the children to ZubHub, building a toy car that runs on batteries, and uploading the project on ZubHub.  
  

Our aim for next year is threefold- firstly, we will be developing and promoting ZubHub further. Secondly, we will be creating more creative learning activities; and thirdly, we will conduct more workshops centered around our activities and ZubHub, in order to promote its usage. Stay tuned to our blog for more updates!

Two years ago, in April 2022, Unstructured Studio became part of the prestigious Outreachy internship for the first time. Outreachy, an open-source and open-science organization, provides paid and remote internship opportunities with the goal to support underrepresented groups in tech. For this year’s summer round, we selected three talented and passionate individuals, Hemant, Faridah and Yaya, respectively from India, Nigeria and Cameroon, as part of our 2023 cohort to work on our web and mobile based platform, ZubHub.

As an organization, our values lie not just in STEAM, but within the creativity and curiosity that nurtures it. Hence, while selecting our next interns, we emphasised not only on the technical prowess of the candidates, but also on their outlook towards this internship. All three of those selected had a thirst for knowledge, were dedicated to improving themselves and our platform, and were consistent in their efforts.

As August ended, and our time with them drew to a close, we had one final call with them to reminisce on the short but eventful period they spent with us. Hemant, located in Hyderabad, India, was involved the most in revamping our landing page for non-logged in users on ZubHub. He also added many new features to the platform such as the ability to create new teams and add creators to a team project. Now, similar to WhatsApp groups, projects can be started by a creator who will take on the role of the admin, and who can oversee the people being added to the project. He shared a fun story with us wherein he was stuck with a backend issue for two days, until he had an eureka moment while going about his day-to-day life, and the problem was fixed.

Faridah, from Abuja, Nigeria, was our UI designer. Her main goal in these three months was improving the user experience of the platform. She worked with Hemant on the landing page redesign and grouping features. Along with these, she worked on project and activity creation form designs, and many more aspects. In her words, it had been an equally challenging and invigorating experience. Her time here made her challenge herself, and she enjoyed the openness with which we approached work and understood and accommodated each other.

Yaya is a software engineer from Buea, Cameroon. His contributions were critical in improving the user interface of the activities and project creations pages. For Yaya, this was a learning experience. He worked with programming languages such as Django and Python that he had no familiarity with before. It taught him to push his boundaries and persevere. He especially cherished his one-on-one calls with Suchakra, our co-founder, and his brainstorming sessions with Faridah.

We also received constructive feedback from our interns. In the future rounds, we will ensure to remain fully active during the contribution period, as that is critical in maintaining morale among candidates.

We were really lucky to have gotten to work with such dedicated individuals. Their quality contributions were essential in overhauling and redesigning ZubHub. We have no doubt that they have bright futures ahead of them and we wish them all the luck in the world.

The month of July brought forth an exciting endeavor for us - our first workshop in the African continent. Our Outreachy intern, Faridah Ejibunu, successfully conducted a workshop focused on ZubHub with 30 children from LEA Primary School, Kagini, in the capital city of Abuja, Nigeria.

Faridah is a UX Designer who is currently interning with us through our program on Outreachy to further develop the user interface of our web and mobile platform, ZubHub. Born and raised in a nuclear family in Nigeria, she has always had a keen interest in education and youth development. During her college years, she often volunteered for nonprofits and taught underprivileged children in refugee camps.

Faridah’s reasoning behind organizing this workshop was twofold - first, to get feedback on ZubHub, and second, to inform more people about the platform. She took the help of her friends and teachers of the school to make this workshop a success. The children quickly grew excited at the thought of building something new and interacting with technology. She and her friends helped them build a small moving vehicle out of cardboard, wires and batteries. After the creation of the project, it was then time to upload a video of it on ZubHub. For many of the students, it was their first time interacting with a laptop, and they were obviously very excited. After a few trials and errors though, they successfully uploaded the video. They said that they were delighted to be a part of a larger community of like-minded creative makers.

Faridah says, “It was difficult for the children to believe at first that we are asking for their help, that they have the power to impact something. However, it did not take them very long to get excited over the idea of creating something new and potentially having a positive influence. I think it is important to let children know that they have agency as well.”

All in all, it was smooth sailing from the beginning to the end. Even though it happened during summer vacation, after their exams, the teachers and parents were very supportive, and even wanted her to conduct future workshops like this. Currently, Faridah plans on collaborating with other interns working alongside her, to organize such workshops in other countries.

Picture Credits: Tunde Aroks Photography

https://tundearoksevents.pixieset.com/unstructured/

It thrills us to announce that Unstructured Studio has been selected by the Ernest Solvay Fund, named after a renowned Belgian chemist and philanthropist, awarded by the King Baudoin Foundation based in Brussels, Belgium. The Ernest Solvay Fund is awarded by King Baudoin Foundation, an organization working towards sustainable and positive change in society since 1976, to individuals and organizations whose projects they deem aligned with their goals of STEM education, scientific progress and innovation, and sustainable development. We are honored and humbled to say that we are part of the 9 individual and global organizations who were awarded this notable grant of €10,000.

From its inception in 2021, Unstructured Studio’s goal has been to build a movement in which every child, anywhere in the world, has access to creative education. We have conducted many workshops in India based on our repository of creative STEAM activities, and have developed a web and mobile-based platform named ZubHub, which is designed as a documentation forum to improve the 4C skills of the learners. Learn more about our work on our website.

Every generation benefits when children have access to creative learning and play. Our team works tirelessly, developing and delivering programs and tools to underserved communities across the globe. This grant will enable the team to grow its current programs and expand to reach more educators and children with its critical and creative mission! - Sarah Rodlund, Grants Manager

With this transformative grant, we plan to conduct 15 in-person and online STEAM workshops with children & educators around India by partnering with local organizations/ schools. These workshops will serve as a platform for them to discover their potential, unleash their creativity, and build critical problem-solving skills. If you are interested in organizing a workshop at your school or non-profit, we would love for you to reach out to us. Contact us at: rudrani@unstructured.studio or WhatsApp at +91 9903109021.

We would like to express our gratitude for tireless volunteers, advisors and interns whose hard work made this grant a reality 🙏

You know, I have been organizing storytelling sessions for the past couple of decades. My children were my first avid listeners. Once I realized I might have a knack for this, I started telling stories in my school and among the kids in my neighborhood. I gradually moved to larger audiences in book fairs and literary festivals like Bookaroo Festival, Junior Writer Bug Children's Festival, and others. Storytelling started becoming a passion of mine. I started a Youtube channel where I would document my storytelling and other adventures. Since my stories are mainly for children, toys became an integral part of them. In fact, I grew very attached to one of them, in particular, a panda I had purchased abroad.

My daughter Srishti was the one who encouraged me to take this storytelling session. She lives in the US, and on her recent trip to India, she shared with me her experience of attending a free and open-source software-related event called LibrePlanet in Boston. She met a German author, Matthias Kirschner, there and had a chance to read his book, "Ada & Zangemann - A tale of software, skateboards, and raspberry ice cream". Srishti is passionate about free and open-source software, and this book deeply inspired her. While going about our daily chores one day, she floated the idea of us together taking a storytelling session based on this book with children in our neighborhood slums.

I'll be honest; this initially seemed like an impossible feat to me. This is a case where the storyteller and the audience will be out of their depths. Not only was I used to telling stories in Hindi, but the topic behind this story will also be alien to most children in the slums of India. Most of them are unfamiliar with computers, so I felt that hardware and software concepts would be too complex for them to comprehend.

But my daughter was insistent. She said she had glanced at my YouTube channel and had full faith in my abilities. After some deliberation, I decided to accept the challenge. Madhavi Joshi from Robin Hood Army helped set up the workshop. On a sunny Sunday morning, we set out for our field trip with my trustee Panda sidekick in my bag, along with some chips, biscuits, and toffees.

The original story in Matthias' book is about two children- Ada and Zangemann. Ada is poor- her entire savings fit into a cookie jar, and she had to tinker with her toys with items she found in the trash. Zangemann, on the other hand, is extremely rich. He lives in a hi-tech, multi-storied house with countless rooms and a swimming pool. He has access to expensive technologies and wants to use them daily, like fixing his skateboard, cleaning his room, and making an ice cream machine.

Telling the story of rich boy Zangemann to children living in huts would always be difficult. So, I focused more on Ada and her achievements. She also only has a little, except her wit and resourcefulness, with which she achieves her goals. I more or less "Indianized" the story entirely. Ada's tiny cottage became a slum hut, and her day-to-day life became ones that these children could associate with very well, like her mother making roti on a stove and her father going to work on a bicycle. I also localized the names like Ranjan, Rajkumar, Sonu, etc.

But the main issue remains yet to be solved! How do I explain heavy, technical concepts like free and open-source software to children who have never seen a computer before? I decided to orient them to a computer by comparing their body to hardware and their soul to software. Like they can tell their soul to stretch their hands and clap, a person can similarly add a few lines of code in the software to make changes in the hardware.

Ada wanted to solve her parents' problems using computers but had no money. As the story progresses, she goes to a dream world where her father goes to work without pedaling on the bicycle; her mother makes roti without lighting the stove. This piqued the children's interest- they wanted to know what else they could do using the computer. The possibility of making ice cream using a computer intrigued them- after all, who doesn't love ice cream?

Srishti and I were both pleasantly surprised with the outcome of this workshop. Neither of us expected that we could successfully explain foreign concepts like open-source software to children who had only heard of computers. I was glad to be part of such an innovative storytelling session where I could use my skills fully!

About the post author: Sangeeta Sethi is an avid reader and storyteller. She recently took a storytelling session on computers and coding in collaboration with the Robin Hood Army and us with kids at Bikaner in rural Rajasthan. Today, she shares her experiences with us.

Originally written in Hindi by the author, translated by the Unstructured Studio team

Over the past year, we have been observing with glee and joy 🥹 how contributions to ZubHub have made it more than just a weekend project that Srishti and I used to hack on. New features are constantly being proposed and added by our community contributors. With all this new code arriving, it was time to set up a staging and testing server to ensure what lands up in production servers works more or less fine. Here is a story of what this server contains and how we created it.

Keeping true to our tinkering roots, we reused components from an old computer and build a tiny, beautiful pink-colored staging server for ZubHub.

Building the hardware

Our staging server contains an Intel i3 6600K processor, two 240GB and 500GB disk drives, 8GB of RAM, a 450W power supply unit, and a pretty pink-colored case to hold this all together.

By no means this is "server grade" robust, but this is enough for our semi-automated workflow for testing new features and pull requests (PRs). If you, as a contributor, are wondering why it takes us time to merge your PR, it's because we are testing them on this humble machine :)

Configuring software

Every software component on this server is either FOSS or built upon open-source technologies. The base operating system is Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server edition. Over this, we have installed the Cockpit tool which we use to maintain the server's network and disks, update packages, and manage virtual machines and containers that run on this. We had to install the cockpit-machines package which enabled us to create virtual machines (VM) on this server. The ZubHub staging machine is essentially a VM in which we run scripts to quickly fetch the latest PRs, install fresh ZubHub, and then test them.

As you can see above, the zubhub-testing VM is running on the server which is where the actual ZubHub staging environment is hosted.

Configuring networks

The server is connected to a gigabit internet line at our office in Canada (Toronto). The host machine is only accessible via the local network. At the same time, the VM runs Tailscale to create a virtual private network (VPN) of trusted machines from which we can access the staging environment. For ease of access, we created a sub-domain that redirects to the zubhub-testing VM. Of course, this is only accessible from our private network. This provides some basic security as well as isolates the host server.

Staging & testing workflow

Whenever our contributors submit a PR on the ZubHub repo, that looks like an essential new feature or a significant UX improvement (such as this one), we run a small script on the zubhub-testing VM. This script clones the ZubHub repo, checks out the PR, rebuilds ZubHub and then sets up a fresh backend and frontend for testing. We then navigate to the staging environment and begin a round of manual testing. As we expand, we will replace the manual testing with automated testing scripts to ensure there is no regression as new features are added. Once testing is complete, the PR is merged to the master branch, which begins the build and deployment process on the main ZubHub instance. This build and deployment happens via GitHub actions.

Interesting in contributing to our project? Here is the link to our repository: https://github.com/unstructuredstudio/zubhub 😊