CHENNAI: My parents had not experienced the television screen till they were in their teens, so it was certainly a notable change for them to see their daughter not only grow up with television but also explore the Internet and the advent of social media. In the same vein of generational shock, I now find it difficult to digest that the children of today have not just grown up on smart technology but are more aware and frequent users of the same. While practically-versed and immersed in the tech that surrounds them, how much does the young generation understand of what goes on behind and beyond the screen? To explain these fundamentals in a simplified fashion and peak untapped curiosity of children, software engineers Shalini Satish and Raam Baranidharan created The Little Book of Cool Technology; a family pandemic project.
With lockdowns confining children to their homes — and the increased exposure and fascination of technology that came with it — the two sought out books that would explain these concepts to their daughter Disha. But when the market disappointed in options, they decided to create one themselves. “We wrote a book because we wanted people to read, not just consume visual forms of media. We saw a market gap and this also played to our strengths. We thought this was the best way to introduce tech. We have used a lot of analogies to explain the concepts. We wanted to introduce the concept and do justice to it but also have also kept some open-ended questions (for the children to explore by themselves),” shares Raam. It seems that Disha also played her role, giving important feedback as the target audience.
Breaking barriers and concepts
The book features protagonists Alia and Copa, young learners who navigate the Internet, websites, search engines, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and more. Making Alia the techie half of the duo was their little attempt at breaking gender barriers. With illustrations, succinct text, fun facts and relatable examples, the two manage to bring the technology around us into context. An interesting addition is that of worksheets and activities — fill in the blanks, choose the right answer, word search — that keeps you engaged even within swathes of information. Despite being a tech-novice and having no particular interest in the subject, I found myself interested as I compared the examples to my real-life applications of the same.
While breaking down concepts to interesting, bite-sized explanations is an achievement, the writers certainly were helped by the illustrations of Nishi Banka that keep the book visually pleasing. The illustrator, too, was apprehensive about this unique project, one where she had to depict rich information into cutesy artwork. “I started the project by storyboarding the book’s entire content before I began illustrating. This helped me visualise every page and Raam and Shalini were accommodating enough to make changes to the content where I felt more visual cues were necessary. Some pages were more difficult than the others to visualise and overall, it was quite a challenging project but I had a lot of fun doing it…When I had taken on the project I did not know that this book would come out so well. I am very proud of the final product,” said Nishi, adding that the writers had been helpful and patient throughout the process. The illustrations do seem for very young eyes (especially paired with extremely vivid and busy pages), but they did engage a certain novice adult as well.
Standing with schools
The book in some ways reminds me of Tell Me Whys that I would hoard as a child. It’s not something you would devour in one go — although I did — but rather reach for in times of curiosity. The writers agree as well, intending it to be a supplement for school curriculum that can often take a theoretical path. “School will definitely teach the students details (how many keys a keyboard has, say), which is a great thing. It is more a question of how to complement this, bringing in the topical aspects, things that children use from day to day.
Tech evolves fast and I don’t know if school curriculum can evolve that quickly so it is important to complement it and parents are trying to do the same,” Raam explains. The Little Handbook…seems to have certainly helped, with positive reviews from parents and children, and this learning reporter. The family has established Radish Tales (on Instagram and Youtube) to deliver educational content to young readers.