Makers and Communicators Program

Great technologies in the world emerge from simple tinkering and out of box thinking. Going forward these skills will be the most sought after skills. However, the current curriculum at out technical institutes (polytechnics, ITI’s) needs to be updated. Basic understanding of STEM will be driver for growth in coming decades. Developing country like India is in dire need of this talent and untapped talent is present ITI and other vocational programs.

Education is based on rote Learning and conceptual understanding is missing. We have realized this and slowly there is a movement to start making, tinkering labs, science/math spaces in schools and Engineering colleges. These spaces however lack skilled passionate individuals who can run these. There are about 2000 schools which have been awarded Atal Tinkering Labs (20L Rs per school over 5 years). This in independent of private schools and Engineering colleges trying to setup Maker Spaces. We embarked upon this idea based on the success of our pilot with ITI interns from AliRajpur (M.P.) and queries from various schools offering Rs 50,000 pm for resource people manning the makerspaces.

To address this dearth of resources, Makers and Communicators (MACOMs) Program, a flagship program to train next generation Makers at IIT Gandhinagar, was proposed and will now be implemented in Gujarat and Bihar with more states to follow.