‘Hindi’ touch to scientific innovation! NASA funds programs to produce video to teach Hindi through Indian scientific innovations
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Washington, Jun 18: NASA is an important and leading scientific organization. NASA always engaged in motivating and propagating the scientific innovations in masses. Now taking a creative initiative in this manner, A program funded by NASA has created a series of videos about popular archeological sites and institutions in India, where video comes with lessons in Hindi.
The usage of Hindi is pre-designed for teaching the language internationally using themes of science and technology.
The videos focus on scientific innovations at various sites like Amer Fort Palace and Hawa Mahal in Jaipur, the rust-resistant Iron Pillar in Delhi, UNESCO Heritage site Qutub Minar, the Chand Bawri stepwell and the Jaipur Foot, a prosthetic given to impoverished amputees in 80 countries for free.
For this unique innovative program, NASA’s STARTALK granted USD 90,000 to Ved Chaudhary who is the director of this project.
The program is supplemented by funding from Chaudhary’s New Jersey-based foundation Educators’ Society for Heritage of India. The program is administered by the National Foreign Language Centre at the University of Maryland.
Principal investigator, Ashok Kumar said, “This was a unique experience. I never knew I was going to have so much fun doing my research”. He also added context is crucial to learning new languages. Each video, designed for learners from middle school through college, employs a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) perspective “to provide an interesting and incredibly rich context to create learning experiences that can push learners to the advanced level of Hindi.