**4. STEM: Robotics and DIY**

Robotics has been successfully employed as a very effective STEM tool to inculcate not only useful digital skills such as programming and automation that form the basis of more advance and crucial technologies of the modern era such as Artificial Intelligence but also facilitate development of collaborative problem solving competencies. It has served as a very good advertisement for STEM. However, counter to popular belief, STEM is not just robotics. As a matter of fact, STEM methodology is not dependent on any specific hardware or software. It is the process of understanding a problem and then going through the Engineering Design Process steps to find a solution that forms the basis of STEM methodology.

With the advent of STEM methodology, many commercial STEM products and solution providers sprang into action and introduced very high quality STEM kits. These kits for the most part were Robotics kits, which were developed with the help of teams of engineers, educationists and neuroscientists. The Robotics kits came with a curriculum and a complete set of lesson plans and proved to be highly effective in achieving desired outcomes. However, they carried a very steep price tag that made it nearly impossible to employ them at mass scale, particularly in developing countries.

Fortunately, by virtue of explosion in manufacturing of low cost electronic components in the last couple of decades and availability of freely available opensource educational softwares, robotics and automation that lay the foundation for more advance technologies such as Artificial Intelligence have become more and more accessible to the less and less privileged. For example, as a substitute to the high-end Robotics kits, a locally available robot chassis, Arduino microcontroller, low-cost sensors and freely available open-source softwares including block-coding applications provide a reasonable and affordable alternate for STEM activities.

Although these open-source hardware and software provide a lot more versatility and flexibility in terms of adding new functionality, they do come with a catch. Like all open-source solutions, they require a fair amount of technical understanding and ability to do system integration. In addition, these require meticulously created lesson plans that make it easy for the facilitators to conduct the sessions and the students to create projects without any technical hiccups arising from the hardware or the software. In most urban schools where computers are available, the locally developed kits are an affordable and effective substitute for expensive STEM kits.

However, in rural areas where computers are not available, STEM lesson plans require careful integration of hands-on activities that not only facilitate achieving desired objectives but are also feasible and affordable in the local context.

In this context, DIY projects using low cost daily life materials or recyclable and reusable materials prove extremely effective. The efficacy of these activities has been proven in many urban and rural setups in extremely resource-constrained environments. Discarded plastic bottles, cups, plates, cardboard boxes, rubber bands, balloons, straws, etc. all are valuable resources for STEM activities. Lack of resources is not necessarily a handicap; it is often an opportunity to be as creative as possible with whatever means available.
