PUNE: NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), the government of India’s flagship programme to promote innovation and entrepreneurship nationwide in schools, universities and industry, has selected additional 1,500 schools for the establishment of Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs).
The addition of these schools will give a major boost to the vision of the mission to ‘cultivate one million children in India as the innovators of tomorrow’.
With this announcement of the new ATLs, AIM, has selected 2,441 schools across India to establish ATLs.
ATLs are innovation play workspaces for students between Std VI to XII, stimulating innovations combining science and technology. These open ended innovation workspaces equipped with state of the art technologies like 3D printers, robotics, sensor technology kits, Internet of things, miniaturised electronics etc enable the students to learn and solve local community problems using emerging technologies. Students are encouraged to explore and experience design thinking and innovation, using a do-it-yourself approach and develop innovative solutions to India’s social, community or economic problems.
Many students who have benefited the facilities of ATLs have started developing prototype solutions and creative projects such as better irrigation management, waste management and sensor-based solutions using robotics in their labs.
The government believes that active participation by schools and their students in ATL will power the transformations of ‘New India’ through their creativity and innovation by 2022.
The 2,441 schools have been selected from over 25,000 applications till date from two rounds of applications.
It will enhance the coverage of ATLs to over 98 per cent smart cities, over 93 per cent of the districts that count to more than 655 districts.
One of the ATL established in the city is at Maharashtra Education Society’s Bal Shikshan Mandir English Medium School, Kothrud which was recently inaugurated by Union Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar.
Another ATL is soon to be inaugurated at MES Rani Laxmibai Mulinchi Sainiki Shala.
