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Chennai, Feb 11
The Indian Institute of Technology Madras Pravartak Technologies Foundation is partnering with Asha For Education to launch Rural Technology Centres (RTC) to take computer science literacy to remote and rural Government school students in Tamil Nadu.
Two Asha-IIT Madras Pravartak Rural Technology Centres were inaugurated on Friday at Kanakamma Chathram and Seethanjeri villages of Tiruvallur district located about 60 km from Chennai. There are plans to launch more such RTCs near government schools this year, says a press release from IIT Madras.
These centres will spread knowledge of technology and its benefits to rural areas of Tamil Nadu. The centres will train students of Classes 9 to 12. The Foundation provides financial support for this project with technical support being envisaged as well.
Highlighting the key objectives of Asha-IIT Madras Pravartak RTC and its benefits for rural students, V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras and IIT Madras Pravartak Technologies Foundation, said, “IIT Madras is committed to working towards providing access to quality education and technology to students from the rural areas of our country. The setting up of these two rural technology centres marks the beginning of our journey.”
Asha for Education is a worldwide action group formed to catalyse socio-economic change in India through the education of underprivileged children. It has been working with Elementary and Middle Schools since 2015 to educate students in both digital literacy and computational thinking. The group uses advanced block-based programming tools such as ‘Scratch’ from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and ‘Blockly’ from Google to teach programming, the release said.
Based on the assessment of students’ levels, the Asha Team is planning to start two courses on Basic Digital Literacy and Basics of Programming. While instructions will be provided for two-thirds of the course, one-third will be left for project work, where the children create a presentation or software programme of their own.
These two basic courses will be followed up with other Code.org courses on animation, webpage design, and hardware based programming, among others. Eventually, more advanced technologies such as drones, 3-D printing, robotics, and Artificial Intelligence, among others, will be introduced, the release said.
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