Goethe-Institut, the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany has launched the Digital Kinderuniversity in Hindi.
The programme is laid on the foundation of new-age technology that caters to the curiosity of children and helps young minds grow under the leadership of mentors.
Berthold Franke, Director Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan (New Delhi) and Regional Director South Asia, said this would be a hybrid model structure with physical events, integration with school activities as well as online learning.
Here, the knowledge of German language is not a criteria. This programme is recommended for the 8-12 year old age group, though students younger and older can also join.
Goethe-Institut, which is the flagship institution to study German in India, is using the Digital Kinderuniversity platform to reach out to students across the country and help them understand the basics of German using games and science. This content could also be available in other Indian languages, apart from Hindi, in the near future.
Students who are more serious about learning German can then be professionally enrolled into the language-learning programmes of Goethe- Institut in India.
In the Digital Kinderuniversity, students can learn about science using gamified content and will also be learning the German language during the process. This will be offered free of cost.
At Kinderuniversity, children attend lectures and complete exercises based on STEM + Arts i.e. STE(A)M subjects. In this process, students can collect badges that help them advance through levels ranging from Bachelor, Master, Doctorate to Professor.
To further incentivise students, certificates can be downloaded anytime and from anywhere.
Thomas Gödel, Director Language Programmes South Asia and Deputy Executive Director, explained that this is a global language project of the Goethe-Institut that leverages children's curiosity to impart knowledge and make them learn German in a playful way.
"By translating it into the major regional languages of India, we aim to increase the project's outreach and ensure that it benefits a large number of children," he added.
Globally, the Digital Kinderuniversity was launched in the US in 2019.
Franke explained that didactic materials and experiments were developed by didactic experts of the Goethe-Institut. A majority of the videos are from the popular and generation-spanning German TV show Sendung mit der Maus (The Show with the Mouse).
He added that the focus would be on child-friendly learning, exposure to a foreign language, and media literacy.