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Our Bureau

Thiruvananthapuram , Feb. 19

THE General Council of the IT@School project has given the go-ahead to the Rs 10-crore `Project Shiksha', a Microsoft-sponsored programme aimed at imparting IT skills to the teacher and student communities.

The programme envisages providing IT training to teachers and students by setting up an IT academy in the State, a spokesman of the Kerala State IT Mission, the official implementing agency, said.

A meeting of the council appointed a three-member expert committee to initiate the final steps towards signing a memorandum of understanding with Microsoft.

The committee has on it, as members, secretaries to the IT and education departments, the IT@School expert committee member and a former principal of Thiruvananthapuram Engineering College.

IT@School is an information technology study project being launched in high schools in the State as part of total computer literacy programme. To be implemented in an estimated 2,600 high schools, the programme is expected to impart education in information technology to more than 15 lakh students annually. Some 60,000 teachers will be trained to equip themselves with the necessary teaching expertise.

As part of the Project Shiksha, Microsoft will give scholarships to competent students and teachers. The IT academy, which will have a built-up area of 3,000 sq ft, will impart training of international standards to teachers in the State on advanced Microsoft courses.

Kerala, along with the State of Uttaranchal, would be the first two beneficiary States of Project Shiksha, which proposes to accelerate computer literacy by covering over 80,000 teachers and 35 lakh students. Kerala was chosen for its obvious high literacy rate and Uttaranchal, for the "pleasant" experience of "Teach the future" programme conducted with Intel.

The number of States will gradually be brought to 10 over a three-year period, according to a Microsoft India spokesman. The States will be selected on the basis of commitment (bureaucratic and political), basic infrastructure and previous experience.

The company will also be roping in more partners to get the training centres up and running and to put in place an appropriate curriculum. The IT academy for Kerala will come up at either Kochi or Thiruvananthapuram, while that of Uttaranchal will be based in Debra Dun.

Wipro chosen partner: The Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) has zeroed in on Wipro as the consultant for the implementation of the Rs 150-crore local self-government computerisation programme on a build-operate-lease-transfer (BOLT) basis.

Among the four major IT companies that responded to the consultancy bid , Wipro came up with the lowest quote. The other three bidders were Ernst & Young, IBM Global and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The project is expected to be completed within a period of nine months.

More Stories on : IT Training | Kerala | Education

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