The teenagers from Bijoygarh Higher Secondary School for Girls had never seen a remote-controlled car before. Neither had they heard of artificial intelligence. So they were extremely happy unravelling the wonders of science in the Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATL) of Salt Lake School.
ATL is an initiative under Atal Innovative Mission, programmed by Niti Aayog, or the National Institution for Transforming India, a policy thinktank of the central government. Under the scheme, the government provides selected schools with grants to set up science laboratories. The idea is to encourage entrepreneurship through self-employment and to develop scientific interest in students. Over 2,000 schools in India have established laboratories under this initiative, including 68 in West Bengal. Salt Lake School is one of them.
The ATL lab in our school was inaugurated in December by the vice chancellor of Jadavpur University, Suranjan Das. Since then, and even before that, 20 students of our school have been working hand-in-hand to create products of scientific importance with utmost precision and dedication.
For many months, ATL had been an intra-school platform, enlightening students on the importance of robotics, cloud computing, programming, coding, artificial intelligence and more.
Finally we opened doors to students of other schools, in observance of ATL Community Day, to commemorate the birth anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar. Our school worked with Maya Foundation, a non-profit NGO that works to create awareness regarding menstrual health of adolescent girls and for the downtrodden sections of rural Bengal. They helped us welcome 12 girls from Bijoygarh. Some students of Salt Lake Point School also attended the exhibition.
As head boy of our school, I watched over my juniors working hard to make the event a success. “Innovation for all” was our motto and we gave it our best shot. My juniors demonstrated remote-controlled cars, which can be used for fire detection, and if fitted with small cameras, can help in investigation purposes. The remote was a mobile phone, and many of the girls from Bijoygarh tried operating it themselves.
The sight of their excited faces at the sight of the moving car was perhaps my moment of the day.
Aditya Mitra, a budding scientist from our school, demonstrated his hand-made laptop. He had built it with spare parts of other electronic gadgets. “Khub bhalo,” was the general reaction from guests, when I asked them to comment on the expo. They interacted with our students and enquired about making the gadgets and the principles working behind them.
The students from Salt Lake Point School were curious and eager too. “There are so many things we didn’t know earlier,” said one of them. “It has been a wonderful experience, getting to see and learn so much.”
Our students, too, were happy to showcase their hard work and explain the intricacies of their machines.
The exhibition was preceded by the inauguration ceremony, attended by scientist Chittaranjan Sinha. Speaking to the students, he emphasised on the importance of scientific innovation and new thinking to sustain our environment and asked us to help society on a wider scale. He encouraged students by telling stories from the lives of Acharya P.C. Roy and Acharya J.C. Bose. “India today is in the grip of grave disarray with superstitious beliefs reigning. Only scientific and rational thinking can save the nation,” he said.
MLA Sujit Bose spent time with us too and congratulated the students and the management for organising the event. Our principal, Sugata D’Souza delivered the vote of thanks and emphasised that this ATL laboratory shall be the nucleus for the development of a scientific temper in students of schools in our region.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Ananyo Chakraborty, Salt Lake School / July 13th, 2018