On Good Governance Day, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, awarded Prof. Prema Nedungadi, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, and Dr. Sasikumar, CDAC Mumbai, with certificates of recognition for the nationwide rollout of Online Labs for School Experiments.

The function highlighted projects from the government’s Digital India projects from MCIT’s DeitY, DoT and DoP. Projects were selected with potential for nation-wide impact in four categories, Digital Infrastructure, Digital Services, Digital Empowerment and Industry Promotion.

OLabs was awarded as a leading Digital India initiative in the category Empowerment for Good Governance. Under this nationwide initiative, 30,000 teachers in all Indian states will be provided training on OLabs. OLabs currently has over 90,000 registered users. Online labs will also be available in Hindi, Malayalam and Marathi and offered in both urban and rural schools.  OLabs is being moved to the National Knowledge Network (NKN) to support the scaling to millions of students across the nation.

OLabs has been officially endorsed by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) as a teaching aid for all its schools. It enables high-school students to perform virtual science-lab experiments online.

OLabs is developed by AmritaCREATE , an educational technology research initiative of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham under the guidance of the institution’s chancellor, Mata Amritanandamayi, in association with CDAC, Mumbai, under a research grant from the Department of Electronics and Information Technology.

AmritaCREATE (Center of Research in Advanced Technologies for Education), the educational technology initiative of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, has impacted over 8,000 teachers and 200,000 students by providing digital learning solutions. AmritaCREATE has won many awards including the prestigious Computer Society of India, IT Excellence Award for eLearning and Education and the 26th Kerala Science Congress, “Best Exhibit” award.