The Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi (IIIT-Delhi) organised a Computer Science Internship Programme between 30th May and 3rd June 2016 at the institute. 20 students of our School attended the programme which comprised of 6 sessions as below: Robot Making Wireless Networking App Designing Geographic Information System (GIS) Arduino Computer Data Protection and Secure Communication

Both power point presentations and practical demonstrations were given to impart training to the students.

Day 1 (Robot Making)

The first session was held on Monday 30th May, 2016. Students were accompanied by their teachers to the venue. Here, they were taught how to create a robot. Essential parts of a robot were shown to them. Their guide, a student of the institute showed the students the several sensors used in robots. One such sensor was the Passive Infrared Sensor. The students also got a chance to created a robot using this sensor and even learnt to programme it. The robot once equipped with the sensor is able to sense any obstacle in its way and move away. Following the tutorial, the students were divided into groups of 4. Each group created their own robot and programmed it the way they wanted it to react when it sensed an obstacle. Each of the groups also programmed their robots to follow a black line on a white canvas. Finally, when all the robots were ready, the groups raced their robots against each other on the canvas. The group whose robot completed the track in the shortest time won the race.

Day 2 (Wireless Networking)

The second session was held on Tuesday 31st May, 2016. Students were asked to reach the venue on their own. On day 2, they learned about the working of wireless networks and devices. They were taught how to send and receive data without the use of wires through the Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) system. They were also taught how to connect to a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), through a Wi-Fi router, so that their device could connect to the internet. They learned about the ethernet cable and how it is used to connect a PC to the internet. The resource person also taught the students how to achieve strong Wi-Fi signals and how to secure a WLAN using a password. They learned about the different types of cables and their speed of transferring data. Lastly, the students were taken to a lab where it was demonstrated practically how a device sends and receives data.

Day 3 (App Designing)

The third session was held on Wednesday 1st June, 2016. On day 3, students learnt about App Designing. The resource person was one Dr. Arun Mehta, professor at IIIT. He taught the students how to design android apps. The students were divided into groups of 2 to design these apps. They were given PCs equipped with software using which they could design the apps. They designed apps to convert text to speech, make a rolling ball that they could put through a hole, doodle on the screen, etc. They ran their apps on their smartphones and made necessary changes. Dr. Mehta invited each child separately to explain a particular function in the software better. He also helped each to clarify all doubts. At the end, he taught the students how they could publish their apps on Google Play Store and convert their apps to APKs.

Day 4 (GIS and Arduino)

The fourth and fifth sessions were held on Thursday 2nd June, 2016. One of the sessions was on the Geographic Information System (GIS) and the other was on Arduino. In the first session, the students learned about the Global Positioning System (GPS) and how to locate a place with given coordinates using Google Maps. The resource person also taught the students how to generate a driving route, a cycling route or a walking route from one place to another. They learned to measure the road distance from one place to another by simply placing the latitudes and longitudes on a given HTML code. They also learned to publish maps and waypoints independently on Google Maps.

In the second session, the students learned about the Arduino board. This is a device which allows the user to give it a command. The resource person divided the students into groups of 2 and provided each group with an Arduino board, LEDs and wires. He showed the students how to generate a code on the Arduino software to get the LED lights to blink. He also showed them how to generate a code so that 3 LEDs connected to an Arduino board could be made to blink like traffic lights. Later, he also connected an ultrasonic sensor to the Arduino board and showed students how the LED glows when the ultrasonic sensor senses an object in its way. The group also learned to set the range (sensitivity) of the ultrasonic sensor. At the end, the resource person gave students examples of where all an Arduino board could be used.

Day 5 (Computer Data Protection)

The sixth session was held on Friday 3rd June, 2016 on Computer Data Protection and Secure Communication by a professor at IIIT. He gave the students a talk on how information sent to a person could be made secure. He also told them how to compress a file and to what limit it can be compressed. He showed students the method used by hackers to intercept data being sent to people. Later, he conducted an activity to extract a message from a given pattern. Finally, he divided the students into 3 groups. One group was supposed to generate a message and send it to the third group, the other was to make a suitable pattern of the message and try to decode it and the third group was to collect the data, decode the pattern and extract the message from that pattern.

The second group was not able to decode the message but the third group did. The trick was that the third group had some specific points marked on the pattern, which the second group didnt have. This showed how a person can secure data so that it could only be read by the person to whom the data is being sent. At the end, the professor gave the students names of books that they could refer to for more information on the subject.

The instructors and student coordinators at IIIT- Delhi contributed extensively to the success of the workshop. We truly appreciate IIIT-Delhi for providing our students with invaluable insights into the application of different cutting edge technologies and for access to their lab facilities. Our students truly benefitted from the programme.

Ms. Nitu Pandey.