Padmini Nagaraja | Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology

Padmini Nagaraja

Area of Practice	Educator, Mentor, and Designer of Learning Experiences, Curriculums, and Pedagogical Frameworks, Creative and Collaborative Thinker
Education	Postgraduate in Physics BEd (Science and Math)
Work Experience	Physics (Undergraduate level) Instructor at National Defence Academy, Pune Physics and Math Teacher across Indian and Cambridge Boards in high school and at higher secondary levels Mentoring and facilitating learning across a wide socio-economic spectrum, mainstream and non-formal learning centres, science education and teacher education Educational experiments include slow design, play, story, STEAM education, participatory research and learning expeditions
Interest Areas	every day, craft/artisanal work; socio-tech and contemplative practices; imaginative inquiry into learning and cognition; managing beneficial bacteria in the form of fermented food; bio-cleaning agents and spinning cotton and wool; Indian thought and practices
Current Practice at Srishti	Design in education, Systemic design, Cognition and contemplative practices, Thinking about thinking, Bio design
Creative Practice and Outreach	Designing next-generation learning environments Conceptualising Community Garden and Café as sites for learning Teacher practice development Developing platforms for teacher Creative Commons

Projects showcase:

Unpacking Thinking

Unpacking Thinking 1

Unpacking Thinking 2

Unpacking Thinking 3 — Thinking is a fundamental human activity; it allows humans to make sense of the world they experience. While there is no consensus on ‘what’ or ‘why’ of thinking, asking ‘How we think’ seems to allow us to treat it as an action and therefore observe it, create tools to better it and facilitate it for others. So, it becomes important to curate one’s own toolkit for thinking, to practice and facilitate discernment and creativity, the two significant attributes of our thinking.

Living Libraries and Laboratories

Living Libraries and Laboratories — Creation of a blogportal: Catalogue of Concepts from visualisations and experiments carried out in 10 days of studio practice spread over 5 weeks