India’s first Virtual Science Lab for children launched to promote Culture of Curiosity

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Last Updated24/11/2021

In order to promote science to all segments of students in every corner of the country, Union Minister of Science & Technology launched the first-of-its-kind Virtual Science Lab for children.
The labs has been launched under the CSIR Jigyasa program, which will also connect students with scientists across the country.
Virtual Science Lab is also in tune with the National Education Policy (NEP), where students are allowed to choose any subject and the concept of streams has been disbanded.

In collaboration with IIT Bombay, CSIR has developed a Virtual Lab platform under the CSIR Jigyasa program, 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 Objective is to provide quality research exposure and innovative pedagogy in order to drive school students’ scientific curiosity based on an online interactive medium with simulated experiments, pedagogy-based content, videos, chat forums, animations, gaming, quiz, facility sharing, webinars, etc.
Union Minister Jitendra Singh further reiterated that the content will be available in English initially, but has been planned to be made available in Hindi and other regional languages.
A virtual tour of the CSIR laboratories will be facilitated under the Virtual Lab which will expose students to research infrastructure, which otherwise would be difficult to visit physically in some laboratories considering safety standards.
The platform further provides options to interact with scientists and seek their inputs or provide clarification on students’ doubts.

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 was launched back in 2017 and is aimed to address the culture of curiosity and provides a unique platform for bringing scientists and teachers for nurturing young minds.
This program envisages opening up the national scientific facilities to school children, enabling CSIR scientific knowledge base and facilities to be utilized by school children.
This model of engaging school children also has been extended to other schools in addition to KVS.
The JIGYASA platform 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.