Technology is an indispensable ingredient of every facet of our lives in the new normal, becoming increasingly ingrained into all professions. Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Robotics are becoming strong pillars of every field.

To prepare its youth for the digital demands of the 21st century, Goa has implemented a revolutionary scheme for all government and government-aided schools in the state. Termed as Coding and Robotics Education in Schools, this scheme envisioned by the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Goa Dr Pramod Sawant who also is the Minister for Education, to develop computational and design thinking skills by integrating programming into the school level education. It is a great initiative of the Government of Goa to introduce the scheme as part of the Goa State budget 2021.

Levelling the playing field

The NEP 2020 has clearly emphasised that besides being taught to be socially responsible citizens, the children of today also need to be trained to be creators, inventors and adopters of technology. It is, therefore, imperative to teach computing, which promotes problem solving, computational thinking and critical reasoning skills, at par with Mathematics and Sciences.

Therefore, this scheme aims to make coding skills ubiquitous across the school-level student population in Goa. This gives a platform to students from rural areas to acquire skills which have been accessible mainly to urban students.

 This scheme is uniquely conceived as a collaborative efforts of the Department of Technical Education (DTE), in collaboration with the Department of Education and State Council Educational Research and Training (SCERT) of the Government of Goa. A special Project Management Unit headed by Prof (Dr) Vijay Borges reports to Dr Vivek Kamat, Director of DTE, is tasked with the day to day functioning of the scheme.

“Through coding, our objective is to find the spark in the students – see how they understand critical thinking, problem solving, computational thinking, empirical thinking. Coding is one of the tools we are employing to discover these skills,” explains Prof Borges.

The transformation journey

The scheme caters to 450 schools, 510 teachers and 65,600 students from both government and government-aided schools in the state of Goa. There are many individuals drawn from the Industry and other departments that are helping with the implementation of the scheme.

Since the scheme was introduced in March this year, there were multiple sets of competitions for students. The students used development tools such as Scratch and Pictoblox to showcase their learning thus exhibiting their critical thinking skill set.

Besides encouraging the students to participate in hackathons, conferences, and symposium, the government will provide financial support and traineeship opportunities to students for developing project ideas. The entrepreneurial spirit of students will be nurtured through the coding and development labs, and design studios being set up under this scheme.

This is also a great way to infuse problem-solving and technical skills into the Goan education system through technical manpower and curriculum revamping. The existing curriculum for Class VI, VII and VIII has been revamped to include topics that will inculcate computational thinking and Mathematical thinking. 

As children are being trained to apply the theoretical concepts of Maths and Science to solve real world problems through Coding and Robotics, Goa is doing its part in creating a workforce for the digital future of India.

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