From EG-100 1.0 to 2.0

In continuation of my last blog, the finale for EG-100 1.0 was held today (17th July 2021) from 6pm to 8pm. All games were reviewed by a panel of Juries last week in a session that went for long. Lots of interesting ideas came up in addition to giving suggestions to the teams and ranking them for declaring the winners. One of the interesting view point was of Indian games. This is certainly an important dimension — Indian character, sceneries, voices, language, etc is important for the games to get into the minds of all students inclusively. Going further, this will be an important parameter, for sure, in our journey too.

For the finale, we had the honour of having Shri Manoj Ahuja, IAS, Chairman of CBSE as our guest of honour. Despite his busy schedule finding time to join this event was itself a recognition of the importance of educational games to CBSE. In his address, he lauded the idea and the effort, and said in the context of NEP, educational games will carry special significance. He recognised EG-100 as a small step but in the right direction. He also offered CBSE’s support in taking this further. That is a certificate in no uncertain terms. We were also lucky to get Shri Deepak Mathur, Director R10 of IEEE as the chief guest. He appreciated the idea of EG-100 and the pitch we have given to it. He also vouched the support of IEEE even at R10 level, if we opt to dream big. Well, what is going to stop us now?!! He also stayed from beginning to the end of the programme, a full 2.5 hours!

The event started with a welcome note from Dr Sarika Chouhan, Chair SAC of IEEE Mumbai Section, followed by me giving a glimpse of the motivation and the model. We are confident that developing quality educational games can be an excellent project for students, as it offers a) an end to end design and development of a solution, b) opportunity to bring one’s creativity at its best, c) work in something unique compared to most of the projects, d) challenging development work as significant development is involved, and e) to see your work being used by thousands of students for many years. The personal satisfaction that (e) can bring is unparalleled. I remember my professor, Prof HN Mahabala talking about a system called IITMRULE in all forums for Artificial Intelligence, a few years after my degree programme; IITMRULE was my BTech project. Coming back to EG-100, Dr B Satyanarayana, Chairperson IEEE BS took off from here and talked about the IEEE perspective, profusely thanking all the people who contributed. His unwavering support had a critical role in giving wings to the EG-100 movement. Dr Anita S Diwakar, Chair EAC IEEE BS took off from here and recounted the eventful journey of this movement, through lockdown, pandemic, random exam schedules, technological hurdles, and so on.

The last part was the result announcement and plans ahead. The prizes were announced along with playing a 2-min video clip of the game. The teams were also given a couple of minutes each to share their experiences, which was used by all the teams. All shared the challenges, how their determination helped to overcome them, and the excitement in reaching this far. Myself and Dr Satyanarayana then announced the next phase EG-100 2.0, following which Archana Rane from CDAC gave some broad plans of how we are going to run this one. She proposed the use of Moodle as a common platform for communication, submissions, interactions, etc. This was a major pain point this time. After a round or two of internal discussions, detailed plans will be announced. I proposed that we should aim to have at least a 100 teams, by expanding the scope to pan India level. Shri Deepak Mathur seconded this idea to expand the reach and reflected the possibility of a multinational reach at R10 level. For now, pan-India is the dream!

We closed the function with a detailed “thank you” by Dr Anita and a note of happiness on where we could reach and with a very hopeful note on the path ahead. Keep watching this space more news on this; pass on the news to your friends and colleagues to take up projects aligned with EG-100 vision.