IIT-M College Fest 2019: Schoolkids Now Wield The ‘Bot’; Challenge Engineering Students To ‘Match Up’ If They Can

A group of school kids from Kerala are ‘feared ones’ in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras’ four-day technical fest Shaastra 2019.

While hundreds of students from technical colleges are ready for the competition, these school students from Choice School in Kochi have marked their presence amongst ‘big brothers and sisters’ from colleges. The school kids won the event last year, dominated Day 1 of the event on 3 January (Thursday) and are expected to emerge the winners, reports Times Of India.

Choice School allows students from Classes III to IX to study robotics for one hour a week and is among the 2,400 schools to set up an Atal Tinkering Lab (ATL) - an initiative by the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry in 2015. The teachers from the private school attributed this to dedicated innovation and their design lab and the fact that robotics was introduced in the primary curriculum from Class III.

Three years since, 50 students from this lab have participated in robotics competitions worldwide, and many have made their own robots.

The kids, who made an impact at National Institute of Technology (NIT) Calicut and Road Rave, India, and are now at IIT-M.