This article is published in partnership with Museum of Solutions
For a child who has never used a computer independently, the first lesson in artificial intelligence isn’t about algorithms. It’s about a cursor.
For one Grade 6 student from a government school in Maharashtra’s Raigad district, that lesson began inside a 10-storey children’s museum in Mumbai’s Lower Parel, tucked into the old Kamala Mills compound: the Museum of Solutions (MuSo).
When the student joined an immersive artificial intelligence (AI) learning programme there, computers were still unfamiliar territory. Even using a laptop touchpad and typing basic commands were challenges. But over the next few sessions, that began to change.
By the end of the programme, the student had created an email account, learnt to use Microsoft Word and OneDrive, and taken part in coding challenges through Minecraft Education.
What started with the basics of operating a computer had opened a door to exploring artificial intelligence, experimenting with technology and understanding how it works.
“From day one, it was pretty interesting. The AI workshop at the Museum of Solutions brought teachers and students together to learn about technology, explore AI and understand how it can be used to find solutions to different problems, from those in our classrooms to challenges at a global level,” says Meera, a student, who attended the workshop at MuSo.
For thousands of children from underserved communities across Maharashtra, such opportunities are becoming a first introduction to the technology that is increasingly shaping the world around them.
Students experiment with machine learning by training models to recognise objects and understanding how the information they receive shapes their results.
Through AI Explorers, an initiative at MuSo, children are learning about AI through interactive games, experiments, creative exercises and coding activities. The programme, supported by Microsoft Philanthropies India and implemented by JSW Foundation, aims to make AI education more accessible to children who may have limited opportunities to engage with digital learning.
Between July 2025 and June 2026, the initiative reached 9,087 children through foundational AI workshops, while another 313 students took part in a more intensive 10-hour learning pilot. It also trained 80 teachers and worked with 36 schools and 17 NGO and community partners across six districts of Maharashtra.
But the numbers tell only part of the story. At its heart, the initiative is about making sure that a child’s access to emerging technologies is not decided by the circumstances they grow up in.
Bringing AI education beyond privileged classrooms
AI is already influencing how children interact with the world, from the content they watch to the apps they use. But knowing how to use a digital device and understanding the technology behind it are two very different things.
For children from underserved communities, opportunities to explore AI, experiment with coding or even use a computer independently can be limited. The data bears this out. According to the Ministry of Education’s UDISE+ 2024-25 data, only 57.9% of schools in India have computers that work for teaching, and in government schools the figure falls to 52.7%. In Maharashtra, more than 25,000 of the state’s 1.08 lakh schools, nearly one in four, had no functional computer.
Children explore how AI works through interactive activities, learning to question its outputs rather than simply accept them.
At home, the gap is wider still. The ASER 2023 ‘Beyond Basics’ survey of rural youth aged 14 to 18 found that while about 90% of households had a smartphone, only 9% had a computer or laptop. Those with a computer at home were far more likely to know how to use one (85%) than those without (33.9%).
Meanwhile, AI is arriving in classrooms. From the 2026-27 academic year, the Ministry of Education is introducing AI and computational thinking in schools from Class 3 onwards.
This gap led MuSo to conceptualise AI Explorers. It’s a natural fit for a museum whose very name is a mission statement. Opened in November 2023 by the JSW Group and founded by Tanvi Jindal Shete, a former Teach For India fellow, the not-for-profit museum aims to empower children to find solutions to India’s most pressing problems. Within a year, it was named on TIME’s list of the World’s Greatest Places of 2024 and became the first Indian museum to win the international Hands On! Children in Museums Award, competing against 32 museums from 17 countries.
“AI already shapes children’s lives through the phones in their homes, the apps they use and the content they are shown. Yet children from underserved communities rarely get the chance to understand how it works, let alone question it,” says Susan Vaidyan, Head of Education MuSo.
The programme introduces students from Classes 5 to 10 to foundational AI concepts, machine learning, prompt engineering, digital literacy, coding and responsible technology use.
Rather than beginning with technical explanations, the sessions use familiar examples and hands-on activities.
In one activity, students use a teachable machine to train a machine-learning model to recognise different objects or images. They experiment with the data being fed into the system, and then do something unexpected: they deliberately train it incorrectly to see what happens.
When the model begins producing inaccurate results, the children grasp an important truth about AI: its outputs depend on the information it learns from.
The programme also introduces students to AI-generated creativity, prompt-based exercises and community problem-solving challenges, allowing them to explore how the technology can be applied to everyday situations.
Microsoft’s involvement brings technology platforms, learning resources and expertise in responsible AI to the programme.
The programme introduces children to responsible AI use, including online privacy, misinformation, bias and cyber safety.
“An inclusive AI economy cannot begin at college or the workplace; it has to begin in the classroom,” says Kishore Kumar Thangavelu, CSR Lead, Microsoft Corporation India Private Limited.
Through Microsoft 365, students learn to create email accounts, organise their work using OneDrive, write documents in Word and use Excel to organise information. They also explore Copilot to improve sentences, summarise information and help with everyday tasks.
Minecraft Education and MakeCode introduce coding through play. Students programme a virtual agent to chop trees, build walls and construct structures using instructions, loops and conditional statements.
The programme also uses Minecraft’s CyberSafe world to introduce online safety through games and practical challenges. That matters: ASER 2023 found that nearly half of rural young people on social media didn’t know basic safety features, such as blocking or reporting a profile.
But the learning isn’t limited to how these tools work. Children are also encouraged to question the technology, recognise its limits and consider when it should or shouldn’t be used.
AI Explorers began as a two-hour introductory workshop. But the team soon realised that children needed more time to move beyond demonstrations and engage with the concepts themselves.
“It’s important for children to not just use AI tools but to question their outputs and understand their limitations,” says Susan.
The 10-hour programme, spread across three days, gives children the time to do just that. They begin by exploring how AI and machine learning work, including the exercise where they deliberately train a model with incorrect information. On the second day, they explore agentic AI through block coding and a game that shows how AI agents observe their surroundings and make decisions. The final day focuses on responsible AI, covering privacy, transparency and bias, with examples such as deepfakes, phishing and voice assistants that struggle with different accents.
Coding activities through Minecraft Education help students understand instructions, loops and conditional statements while learning through play.
For Susan, the aim is to move children beyond watching demonstrations to experimenting, asking questions and recognising that a machine’s answers are not always right.
“They stopped watching and started doing: trying things, getting wrong results and working out why,” she says.
Their questions began changing too, from what AI could do to how it arrived at an answer, and when its outputs should be questioned.
What changes when children get access?
Over the course of a year, AI Explorers reached 9,087 children through its foundational workshops. Another 313 students spent more time with the subject through the 10-hour immersive pilot.
The programme travelled across six Maharashtra districts (Mumbai, Mumbai Suburban, Thane, Raigad, Ahilyanagar and Pune), reaching children through 36 government and aided schools and 17 NGO and community partners.
There was also an effort to ensure girls were part of this learning experience. Of the 7,398 student records collected, 54% were girls. That matters in a country where, ASER 2023 found, rural boys were more than twice as likely as girls to own a smartphone, and half the boys surveyed had an email ID, compared with under 30% of girls.
But what did the children take away from these sessions?
Between July 2025 and June 2026, AI Explorers reached 9,087 children through foundational workshops across six districts of Maharashtra.
The assessments offer some clues. In the foundational workshops, 81% of the students assessed showed greater interest in AI, while 61% showed an improvement in AI literacy. Among the 126 students assessed in the immersive pilot, 80% demonstrated an understanding of AI and machine learning. Around 75% showed awareness of coding and cyber safety, while the same proportion had set up an email ID and accessed Microsoft 365, in some cases for the first time.
For some children, the change was also visible in how they began to look at technology.
At a Marathi-medium school in Mumbai, a group of girls initially felt that technology and AI were too difficult for them. But as they experimented with AI games and prompt engineering, they began creating AI-generated content, discussing ethical questions and using digital tools to explore sustainability challenges.
What had once seemed out of reach had become something they could try, question and create with.
From first steps to future dreams
The Raigad student’s journey offers a glimpse of what this access can make possible.
At the start of the immersive programme, using a touchpad and typing basic commands were challenges. By the end, the student had independently navigated several digital tools, created an email account and taken part in coding activities.
For Meera, it was a fun, experience-oriented way of learning, where she learnt about AI in depth through games and interactive activities.
For children with limited access to computers, the programme offers an opportunity to explore technology, build digital skills and imagine new possibilities.
“What I found interesting was that we were not just learning about technology, but also understanding how to use it safely and think about things like online privacy, fake information and bias,” she adds.
As Susan puts it, success is not simply about children learning to use AI tools. It is about seeing them experiment, doubt what a machine tells them and ask questions of their own.
As AI becomes part of more aspects of everyday life, the ability to question it may prove just as important as knowing how to use it. And that is a lesson these children are beginning to learn early.
All images courtesy of Museum of Solutions team
