Digital equaliser – STEM Innovation & Learning Centre

Engineering Futures, a STEM education initiative established in 2019 and supported by L&T, has been successful in transforming teaching and learning processes into a collaborative, project-based activity. Through the initiative, we have been providing participating schools with Teaching & Learning Material (TLM kits) focusing on Science and Maths concepts to enhance conceptual learning and strengthen learning outcomes. Over the years, students from 138 intervention schools have demonstrated their creativity and innovation by building working models and showing greater engagement with STEM subjects. STEM clubs have been formed in each school to increase ownership among the students and sustain the project activities after the projects exists from the school.

Now, we have launched a new initiative to focus on supporting these students in upgrading to the next level of exposure - through the STEM Innovation and Learning Centre (SILC). The Centres, designed to cater to both students and teachers,  train the STEM club students and students from nearby schools (1:10 – 1 HUB school and 10 SPOKE schools) to experiment and develop projects aligned with robotics and space kits. Along with this, the teachers are  engaged in developing Edu-reels - short and crisp videos related to the subject curriculum for the students of 6-8 grades.

Objectives of the SILC

• Help students learn, innovate, and build prototypes aligned with four core disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
• Help teachers create their own short video content (Edu-reels) for techno-pedagogy class learning.
• Create awareness on STEM career pathways.

The first of the SILCs (STEM Innovation and Learning Centre) has started in Chennai  and others will soon be functional in one school per location. The SILC  acts as a Hub Centre for students and teachers of grade 6-8. This lab consists of two distinct categories a) for students, and b) for teachers.

• Robotics and Space Technology Kits
  Students are  provided with equipment such as space kits, robotics kits, and all the other tools needed to develop their knowledge in advanced STEM courses at their schools. The lab  helps students understand practical concepts of science and maths through the “learning-by-doing approach” where students will be facilitated with hands-on experiments.
  
  
• STEM Incubation Workstation  
  The lab has  DIY circuit kits, Arduino kits, 3D printers, 3D pens, Mechanical fabrication tools, Al based tools and more, to help students understand the basic laws of circuits in physics and a programming kit that will help them shuffle their thoughts in various sectors of robotics and help find its applications through programming skills and coding. This is  a maker space for the students to develop innovative ideas and build them as prototype models. Further models could be presented at State/National/International levels and at various competitions with the support of the coordinators from NGO partner American India Foundation Trust (AIFT).
  
  
• Studio for Edu-reels
  The shutdowns during the Covid pandemic led to an increased usage of smartphones among students to catch up with their lessons. Hence was born the concept of Edu-reels- this “Digital Equaliser” is a 30-60 second video capturing important definitions and basic concepts. These educational reels build curiosity and interest in the lesson ahead.
  
  

  The active use of this kind of video in the classroom is pushing more and more educators towards finding more creative ways to deliver study material to students. This includes creating more engaging and high-quality video lectures. The infrastructure and equipment provided under the studio set-up supports the teachers in creating quality Edu-reels.