NITI Aayog's 'AIM' selects additional 1500 schools

New Delhi [India], Dec 26 (ANI): Government of India's flagship program, NITI Aayog's Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), to promote innovation and entrepreneurship nationwide in schools, universities and industry, has selected additional 1500 schools for establishment of Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs).

The addition of these schools will give a major boost to realize the vision of the mission to 'Cultivate one million children in India as the innovators of tomorrow'.

With this announcement, AIM has selected 2441 schools across India to establish ATLs to date since it began its operations over a year ago.

"As part of our mission to 'Transform India into an Innovative Country' the active engagement of ATLs is extremely important and far reaching in its implications," said mission director, ATL, R. Ramanan.

ATLs are innovation play workspaces for students between Grade VI to Grade 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 (IoT), miniaturized electronics 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.

The young students who have already got exposure to creative technology platforms to nurture their curiosity, creativity and imagination from ATLs in their schools, have already started designing prototype solutions and started creative projects such as better irrigation management, waste management, and sensor based solutions using IOT devices and robotics in their labs.

Therefore, ATLs will help our country to transform young students to young innovators.

The labs are designed to spur the spark of creativity, and go beyond regular curriculum and text book learning. The labs will also enable students explore skills of future such as design and computational thinking, adaptive learning and artificial intelligence.

The 2441 schools have been selected from over 25000+ applications till date from two round of applications.

It will enhance the coverage of ATLs to over 98 percent smart cities, 93 percent+ of the districts (655+ districts). (ANI)

This story has not been edited. It has been published as provided by ANI