India’s first Virtual Science Lab for children launched

Ministry of Science & Technology launches India’s first Virtual Science Lab for children under CSIR Jigyasa programme, which will also connect students with scientists across the country.

CSIR has partnered with IIT Bombay to develop a Virtual Lab platform under CSIR Jigyasa programme, which facilitates classroom learning with laboratory research for school students. The target audience for the Virtual Lab platform is students of the standard VI to XII (11-18 years) who would like to explore science using different activities, experienced researchers and faculties on the subjects of Science, Mathematics, Biology and IT.

The main aim of the Virtual Lab is to provide quality research exposure and innovative pedagogy for school students to drive their scientific curiosity based on an online interactive medium with simulated experiments, pedagogy based content, videos, chat forums, animations, gaming, quiz, facility sharing, webinars etc. The content will be available in English initially, but has been planned to be made available in Hindi and other regional languages. The CSIR Virtual lab will therefore enable curiosity driven research based concepts, encourage higher order thinking skills, promote entrepreneurship and develop passion about science.

The key highlights of the virtual lab are:

• Open source platform
• Access content in regional languages
• Scientist / Researchers Support
• Knowledge Upgradation for Teachers and Students
• Project based support
• Fun based Gaming
• Need based Videos and Animation
• Simulation Experiments
• Promote scientific temperament
• Science based webinars
• Student Entrepreneurship
• Student-Expert forums
• Student to Student forums
• Simplified content
• Availability to technical assistance
• Build confidence and motivation

 “Jigyasa” since its launch in 2017, was successful in connecting nearly 3,00,000 students and more than 5,000 teachers with CSIR and they have benefited directly through visits to CSIR labs.  The major stakeholders for the programme are academic based community consisting of MHRD, CSIR scientist’s faculties, Ph.D. research students, school and junior college students, Sansthas, NGOs, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samithi, State Government Schools, Independent outreach faculties and institutions carrying out successful outreach activity for school and junior college students are the potential stakeholders as well as beneficiaries.

Source : PIB