Thiruvananthapuram, For the first time in India, Kerala Infrastructure & Technology for Education (KITE), the Edtech arm of the state government, is setting up robotic labs in 2000 High Schools from December 2022, which will benefit 1.2 million school children.

V. Sivankutty, Minister for General Education, on Saturday said this will facilitate innovative ways for increasing the knowledge skills of students through fun learning and the inauguration of 9000 Robotic Labs through Little KITEs-the largest ICT Network of students in India, would be done by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on December 8, here.

"Robotics is an important training component under the Little KITES programme, through which students in public schools would get an opportunity to get hands-on training in the latest technologies areas such as robotics, IoT, artificial intelligence. Moreover, the programming training as part of this would help in the enhancement of creative thinking and problem-solving ability of students, which would help them in the learning of all subjects", added the student leader turned Minister.

K. Anvar Sadath, Chief Executive Officer of KITE said each Robotic Kit deployed to school comprises of Arduino Uno Rev3, LEDs, SG90 Mini Servo Motor, LDR Light Sensor Module, IR Sensor Module, Active Buzzer Module, Push Button, Bread Button, Jumper wires and Resistors.

"KITE will provide further support to schools to source additional spares, if required, from the local market by using the funds provided for Little KITEs units", said Sadath.

In addition to the deployment of Robotic Kits in schools, 4000 KITE Masters would also be trained using a specific training module on how to use this equipment in schools.

Using these KITE Masters, KITE is imparting training directly to 60,000 students. The Little KITES members thus trained, would in turn train other students which would directly benefit over 12 lakh students through this initiative.

Students will also be trained in various activities, including development of Traffic Signal, Automatic Street light activated through light sensing, Electronic Dios, Automatic Door, Security Alarm.

Among the other training that would be imparted would be on Electronic Voting machine, Audio controlled Home Automation (IoT), Walking stick for Visually challenged.

Further, creation of computer games using Scratch, development of mobile apps using aApp Inventor' by renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Artificial Intelligence based activities are also trained for students as part of this programme.