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In an effort to spread computer literacy in every school in the state, the Uttaranchal government uses mules to carry computers to unreachable destinations
The Uttaranchal government's Aarohi project has been imparting basic computer education to all government and government-aided schools, from classes VI-XII. Around 40 teachers from Almora and Bageshwar district in Uttaranchal are the latest to be trained under the project by the Microsoft IT Academy in Dehra Dun.
Teachers from remote village schools in the state are trained in a private-public partnership -- by big IT companies such as Microsoft, Intel -- and are expected to share the knowledge with their colleagues and students.
"We want to bridge the digital divide. We want to establish an IT industry but we need to be prepared for it. If we get the IT industry here and our youth are not computer-literate, the jobs will go to outsiders," says Amarendra Sinha, Uttaranchal's IT secretary until two months ago.
Project Aarohi aims to provide four computers to every school in the state, at a monthly cost of Rs 10 to students. Till date, the project has covered around 1,206 government schools and 281 aided schools. Two hundred and twenty-six schools are yet to be brought into the network.
Many schools are located far from roads and require mules to carry the computers to the schools; sometimes, they are helped by enthusiastic children.
"Earlier, we did feel a certain deficiency. We felt that if we lived in a city we would have had access to computers," says Shiv Singh Bist from Almora, who finished his 15-day training at the Microsoft IT Academy. Thanks to the project the school in Almora now has four computers.
In Nainbagh village in Tehri, computers have helped make the students more attentive. The administrative paperwork too has been reduced. The teachers now have an online record of the 3,000 students who have graduated since the school was established in 1972.
Despite the project's positive impact, however, there have been a few stumbling blocks such as lack of maintenance and power failures in some of the hill districts. "Though the schools have been provided generators, these are expensive to run," says a report in the local media.
According to Brij Mohan, a teacher at a school in Nagarjun, Almora district, language is another big hurdle in teaching the children computers. "The students don't know much English. So it's very difficult to explain things to them."
Source: The Indian Express, October 1, 2005
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