All TN districts to get ‘Atal Tinkering Lab’ for students

Aimed at fostering creativity among school students and to expose them to innovation and technology, Atal Tinkering Laboratory (ATL) will be established in all 32 districts in Tamil Nadu. Participating in an interaction session with incubatees on TREC-STEP campus on Saturday, R Ramanan, Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission, Niti Aayog, said that they had planned to establish the state-of-the-art laboratories equipped with tools and learning kits in at least 5,000 schools across the country this year.

Through the facilities available in ATL, students studying between class VI and class XII will be exposed to the tools and do-it-yourself kits inculcating innovation to find solutions to real-time problems. “ATL will be established in schools in about 93 per cent of the districts in the country, including all the 32 in Tamil Nadu. Gadgets to support Augmented Virtual Reality, 3D printers, and electronic equipment to learn robotics will be available in such model labs,” R Ramanan said. Close to 2,400 schools across India have been identified , of which at least 170 schools from Tamil Nadu have found a place. Facilities including one-time establishment cost amounting to Rs 10 lakh and operational expenses of Rs 10 lakh for a maximum period of 5 years would be provided to each of the ATLs by Niti Aayog.

Parameters such as minimum 1,500 sq ft area (1,000 sq ft for schools in hilly area), internet facility and marks scoring percentile of students enrolled in the applicant school would be considered to sanction ATL facility by NITI-Aayog through a selection process. “Trichy district might be getting 4-5 ATLs within this year. Such lab facility would make students to come up with innovative solutions for routine problems they face,” Ramanan added. The labs could also host national and state-level science exhibitions to promote inventiveness among school children.

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