Jamshedpur: Prioritise the fun and the learning will come, they say. And, that is what a Tinker Fest is all about.

CBSE-affiliated Jamshedpur Public School, Baridih, which was last year gifted an Atal Tinkering Lab (ATL) that is powered to acquaint students with state-of-the-art equipment such as robotics tools, sensors and 3D printers, on Wednesday organised an innovation fest for 36 students of nine other city schools.

Four Class X students each from JH Tarapore School, Rajendra Vidyalaya, St Mary's High School, Baridih High School, SDSM School for Excellence, Valley View School, Jusco School Kadma, Baldwin Farm Area High School and AIWC Academy of Excellence participated in the daylong Tinker Fest and learnt how to programme robots with ATL kits.

Class X students of Jamshedpur Public School played mentors. All the teams were taught how to make a basic remote-controlled crane that can lift things up and move them wherever needed.

"It was fantastic! We were allowed to build the whole structure using motors and sensors. Other workshops are more demonstrative, but here we received hands-on experience," beamed Payal Agarwal of JH Tarapore.

Anupam Kashyap from Rajendra Vidyalaya echoed her. "We are now excited about pursuing an advanced course that Jamshedpur Public School will host for us later on. We will learn to make robots for use in daily life," he said.

The Baridih cradle has decided to organise similar workshops for various other schools. Next month, Jamshedpur Public will invite students of government schools to get a hands-on experience in robot-making. It also plans an inter-school fest on robotics.

"The main objective is to learn programming. We want our students and students of other schools to utilise the Union government initiative to the fullest. We are currently teaching our children about 3D printing. One can duplicate almost anything on a 3D printer," said lab in-charge Sanjay Kumar Sinha.

Devised by NITI Aayog, the idea behind ATLs is to set up facilities in schools across the country to help students develop a design mindset, computational thinking and adaptive learning in areas of science, engineering and mathematics.

A chosen school receives a one-time grant of Rs 10 lakh and an additional Rs 10 lakh as operational expenses for a maximum of five years.