How Atal Tinkering Labs fostered innovation during Covid-19

NEW DELHI: Kushagra Pant, then a Class 8 student of Bal Bharati Public School Noida, Uttar Pradesh built an “automatic home cleaning system” for disabled people; as a Class 10 student in rural Kashmir, Rafiq Bin Nazeer built a sensor for cars through which drivers can be alerted to obstacles in their path, reducing the danger of accidents on mountain roads. Anmol Srivastava, in Class 8 of a Bhopal school, made a walking stick for
disabled people.

Common to all three living in different states was their access to Atal Tinkering Laboratories in their schools. Established under the Niti Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission , the “tinkering labs” are meant for students to test their ideas and in the process, improve a wide range of skills.

Pant’s work won him an Intel Galileo Board as award. Before the pandemic, students of Bal Bharti Public School Noida, also built a smart stick for the blind, a working humanoid, smart dustbin with website and a GSM module.

Under ATL, more than 9,000 schools opened labs in the last few years, to inculcate the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation in students of Class 6 and above. They encourage children to work – “tinker” – with their hands, design and develop prototypes after thinking through problems and solutions.

“The main purpose of the ATL labs is to help students explore their scientific and technological temperament, through practical learning,” said Radhika Bhardwaj, ATL in-charge, CT School, Jalandhar, Punjab. Further, the mission through its Mentor India Network identifies professionals to contribute to developing innovation across schools.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic required both schools, students and the mission’s main drivers to change tack, go online with competitions and webinars.

Radhika Bhardwaj, ATL-in charge, CT School, Jalandhar, Punjab

Innovation and the pandemic

“Innovation is the future,” said Srinivas Gangadhara Sankuratri, a regional Mentor of Change. Mentors who consistently contribute towards training in schools are selected as Regional Mentors of Change.

But the pandemic halted the tinkering as schools were shut and learning shifted online. “Nurturing the young minds to take an active interest in the ATL projects needs regular correspondence and feedback. But, due to the pandemic, there was a sudden lapse in the connection with the students,” said Asha Prabhakar, principal, of the Bal Bharati school, Noida, Uttar Pradesh.

To address this gap, school teachers and officials from AIM organized online sessions, expert webinars and virtual tinkering for students.

Students missed the ‘hands-on working’ with the sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) based projects in the labs, during the pandemic, stated Prabhakar. However, schools and officials of AIM found ways to inculcate some skills even with the labs out of reach.

“Digital tools like Scratch for making games, Plezmo for making apps, TinkerCad and Collab Cad for 3- D design, electronics and coding were taught to learners through virtual mode. To initiate new learnings, webinars on topics like patent rights, drone technology and others were held through virtual modes,” added Prabhakar.

Further, Bhardwaj added, “Through online sessions, we started with the concept of TinkerCad, a virtual lab where students can perform virtual experiments at home. Officials from AIM also arranged webinars for teachers to enhance their skills and collaborated with several companies to ensure students got proper mentoring.

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‘Tinkerpreneurs’

In the past two years, students were motivated and inspired to innovate at home through several online competitions. “Students were motivated due to various competitions organised by Atal Innovation Mission like Atal Marathon, nine week-long ATL Bootcamp Tinkerpreneurs and various others. This led to high participation and achievement of our students,” said Prabhakar.

Those selected in these competitions were mentored for the next level by leading tech companies like IBM, Adobe and the premier science institutions Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore and business schools like Indian School of Business (ISB), said Prabhakar. Mentors guided students to become entrepreneurs in different areas like digital marketing, robotics, basic electronics, or operating of drill machines, IoT, coding and several others.

“More than 6,000 mentors of change are already working all across the nation. Mentors guide the students and individually mentor students who have an interest in technology and science,” said Sankuratri. Anil Aher, MoC from Pune, Maharashtra, who also runs a science-focused skill development organisation TinyBots, said: “The role of MoC is to develop an interest in science and technology among students. This is a nation-building exercise and we play a small part in building the nation by involving ourselves with the school students and teachers.”

Asha Prabhakar, Principal, Bal Bharti School, Noida, Uttar Pradesh

Community tinkering’

“For instance, a child in Kerala can have some ideas which are different from ideas from children in Gujarat, as per their surroundings and localities. That’s why AIM has labs all across the country to find talents from all the nooks and corners of the nation. We encourage children to observe their local problems and create ideas and prototypes to solve them. AIM’s main expectation is to develop community tinkering. Through one ATL school, children from several other schools nearby can participate,” said Sankuratri. However, awareness about this is low. Sankuratri hopes that even children from non-ATL schools can make use of the labs.

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Schools reopening

While schools are not still not fully open, Prabhakar found that students who came back were thrilled again to tinker with sensors, microcontrollers, 3-D printing models and designing their physical prototypes. They are now preparing for the ongoing challenge of Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), the Atal Marathon.

Bhardwaj also added, “As school is open, we are ordering more equipment for the lab to create curiosity for students to let them explore new things and concepts. Now, we are ensuring every week students from Class 6 and above have one mandatory ATL class.”

The CT school is also planning to get more experts and involve more non-ATL schools to ensure the school becomes a hub of learning.

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Futuristic skills

The labs are helping to inculcate skills such as “adaptive learning, computational thinking, physical computing, and rapid calculations among many others to pave the way for scaling innovation and entrepreneurship in the country,” said Prabhakar.

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ATL is also helping to bridge the gap between the outside world and the Indian school system, said Sankuratri. “Before ATL, schools were following just the theoretical [teaching], including questions and answers on the syllabus, which is two-dimensional learning,” he said. “However, science is not just about reading and writing but observing and experimenting. A nation’s prosperity is based on its front-end technology development, already available in other developed nations. Countries globally are creating their products and exporting them all over the world. Also, these countries inculcate such skills at the school. Through ATL we are trying to sow the seeds of entrepreneurship.”