The Central Board of Secondary Education has recommended online labs to its affiliated schools for helping students understand experiments better.

May Flower School director J.R. Sharma said: “The schools have been advised to consider introducing OLabs facility which will help students in understanding experiments better through 3D animation. This will be done for science subjects and mathematics.”

The facility, available at www.olabs.co.in, has been developed for students of classes IX and X. It is free of cost. Apart from accessing it from school, students would also be able to access the lab from home and practise experiments in their leisure time.

According to a CBSE circular, the facility demonstrates experiments using interactive simulations based on mathematical models, videos and rich interactive animations to make the lessons more effective.

CBSE city coordinator Rajiv Ranjan Sinha said: “At present, we have labs where children go physically to see the apparatus and conduct experiments. Now, students would have an option where they can practise experiments online and then learn from them. The children would have 24-hour access to the facility.”

To ensure the online labs facility benefits the students, the schools would have to see they have the adequate resources for setting up OLabs.

Shubhangi, a Class IX student of Patna Central School, said: “It is a good thing and we can practise experiments whenever we are free. At school, we do not get enough time on experiments within the stipulated period. With OLabs, we can perform experiments at any time of the day. In fact, this will be more interesting for us to do.”