Need for Community Makerspace Project
With its roots in the first Industrial revolution, the current education system fails at addressing the needs of today’s age. The system has been built like a conveyor belt to feed the workforce needs of the industries. The higher education system as well has been angled towards this with the only difference being college graduates occupying a position that requires a higher skill set. This dehumanizing system not only fails to consider the interests, hopes and needs of the students but also severely fails to evolve with the needs of the fourth industrial revolution. With the advent of automation, we don’t need people who can just operate and consume technology but rather to create it.
To address this huge gap in need and reality, the thingQbator Universities program was conceived and implemented between 2018 and 2020. thingQbator is a community of makerspaces in partner Universities and Institutions across India, where students can identify their interests & needs, learn about digital technologies in a hands-on environment, take up real-world problems and turn their ideas into working prototypes and in the process come up with unique solutions to local problems.
The makerspace project was funded by the Cisco India CSR board and run in partnership with Nasscom Foundation, Project DEFY, and Li2 Technologies, with the objective of imparting digital skills, encouraging local innovation and facilitating student entrepreneurship.
Listen to our learners in the videos above, showcasing what solutions they have been able to build at thingQbato makerspaces.