Atal Innovation Mission
Shaheed Rajpal DAV Public school, Dayanand Vihar has a rich legacy of 40 years in the field of providing excellence in education. Nurturing scientific temper, spirit of enquiry and innovation has been pivotal to the educational programme of the school. The STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art and Mathematics) education programme has strengthened the learning base and our school has received recognition from various government and non -government organizations. The school is a Microsoft school and has also received the IDS recognition from the British Council. The Atal Tinkering Lab was set in the school in the year 2018. Today ATL has expanded its goal of nurturing innovation amongst community members and CWSN.
Renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, are already cost-competitive with fossil fuels and are getting cheaper each year. The myth of expensive renewable energy is out of date. In fact, wind and solar power are already cheaper than fossil fuels in many countries. The International Energy Agency has recently concluded that solar power is now the cheapest electricity in history. To advocate this sustainable source of electricity, we in association with Indraprastha Vigyan Bharati provided an opportunity to students, educators and community members to deliberate ,discuss and learn about affordable and clean energy in a ‘Rendezvous with Prof. Chetan Singh Solanki – the Solar Man of India.’ The event started by Dr. Solanki delivering a talk on ‘Energy, Climate Change and I’ wherein he outlined the need for change in energy usage and consumption pattern in the current energy scenario. During the school assembly attended by around 1300 students and teachers, he appealed to them to switch to solar energy rather than depending on conventional energy resources. He advocated a three-step approach to switching on fully to solar energy and that is — Avoid, minimize, and generate. This was followed by the launch of VVM on Vidyarthi Vigyan Manthan 2022-23 by Dr. Mayuri Dutt. It is India’s Largest Talent Search Examination for New India using digital devices for popularizing science among school students of grades VI-XI conceptualized to identify the bright minds with a scientific aptitude among the student community. More than 400 students from reputed schools in Delhi and NCR attended the session.
The event was attended by teams of students from around 16 schools across East Delhi. Around 2000 students from our school had a chance to interact with the Solar man himself and visit the Solar bus. The main aim of sparking the scientific temper in students and looking for sustainability to drive Innovation, the event was very well perceived by all members of the academia. It also helped nurture the spirit of enquiry and innovation in children apart from helping create a growth mindset. Overall, more than 2500 students, teachers and members of the community attended the events.
It was a great experience for the students as well as the teachers. Knowledge sharing paves way for creating new knowledge. The key takeaways of the celebration were: It was a joyful experience of science and technology. Students and teachers experienced firsthand about how a simple source of Energy from the Sun could be used to sustain all daily life activities. They visited the Solar bus and came up with their own ideas to save energy. Students could deepen their learning about conservation of the environment and were inspired to adopt collaborative practices at a younger age. We hope that this will help foster creativity, spirit of innovation, conscious use of resources and also develop Empath towards the world’s problems as a whole.
Mrs. Vinita Kapoor
SHAHEED RAJPAL DAV PUBLIC SCHOOL
NEW DELHI