IIT Bombay is collaborating with the Nehru Science Centre in
which volunteers trained by the students and faculty of IIT Bombay will show
how content can be accessed with a click. The “internet for all” project, which
is being piloted at 26 rural schools in Nashik district and was launched
Tuesday, will be a facility incorporated in Nehru Science Centre’s mobile
science exhibition bus and will cover a distance of 650 km. The aim is to
literally take internet to the doorsteps of students studying in remote parts
of the state. .It was launched under the aegis of the Union Government’s
flagship ‘Digital India’ campaign.
“Conventional education is extremely rigid with little scope
for creative thinking. Such outside syllabus exposure is the need of the day to
motivate students. We need to tell students, who have no idea about the
internet, that there’s something called connectivity and web pages, how the net
works, how browser works. Digital divide, in my opinion, could be worse than
social divide,” said IIT Bombay Professor D B Phatak.
It is basically science exhibitions on wheels in which 20
theme based exhibition models which are mounted on specially designed Buses.
The fully equipped exhibition bus will travel to rural areas and provide hands
on internet experience to all the students in rural schools. The aim of this
initiative is to take Science to the door steps of rural school children and to
enthuse students to take up careers in Science and Technology. Under this
initiative, students will be provided few Aakash tablets during interaction
session with volunteers to showcase the power of internet and its uses for the
society.
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