{"id":781,"date":"2010-04-26T09:30:54","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T13:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/?p=781"},"modified":"2012-09-27T10:37:32","modified_gmt":"2012-09-27T14:37:32","slug":"itschool-project-successfully-educating-kerala-with-ict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/ict-tools-for-south-asia\/itschool-project-successfully-educating-kerala-with-ict\/","title":{"rendered":"IT@school Project: Successfully Educating Kerala with ICT"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n IT@School Project<\/a> is the technology arm of the General Education Department of Government of Kerala, which was setup in the year 2000 for empowering the state school populace by imparting Information Communication Technology (ICT) enabled education from the grass root level. <\/p>\n Since its inception, the Project has achieved several milestones in implementing ICT enabled education in over 8,000 schools in the state, including enhancing the intellectual productivity of teachers and the curriculum comprehension of students. The backbone of the project is its strong network of 200 Master Trainers and 5,600 School IT Co-ordinators (SITCs) in the state, who are handpicked school teachers who are selected, based on their interest in learning and teaching ICT enabled education.<\/p>\n Teacher Training<\/b><\/p>\n The IT@Schools program is fully integrated into the existing educational processes. It relies on the elaborate teacher training structures within the public education system in Kerala to train the school teachers on using ICTs, both in terms of ITlearning and ICT Enabled learning learning. There are a set of master trainers who first acquire sufficient expertise in using computers. <\/p>\n Since these trainers are themselves teacher educators, who have also taught in schools, they are much more likely to bring up the best possibilities of using computers for learning different subjects. Through elaborative Capacity Building processes, the Project aims to empower the existing teachers in schools to use the various facets of Information and Communication Technology as an educational tool. <\/p>\n As on date, as many as 1.1 Lakh teachers have been given trainings as part of the Project\u2019s initiatives. The initial years of the Project was focused more towards imparting various IT based training programmes based on IT and now the scope has elaborated to enable them to handle their subjects using ICT as a tool.<\/p>\n Content Development<\/b><\/p>\n In Content Development, The free OS, IT@School GNU\/Linux is bundled with several educational softwares like Dr. Geo, Rasmol, K-Tech lab, Geogebra, Chemtool, Kalcium etc . All these packages are being extensively customised by the teachers themselves for facilitating complete ICT enabled education in the state. The Project has also prepared interactive multimedia CDs, Handbooks & Training modules for ICT, as well as Text books for IT in standard 5 to 10. <\/p>\n ICT Infrastructure<\/b><\/p>\n Through infrastructure upgradation, IT@School Project intended to put in place a system for the proper supply of computers and accessories to schools and to uplift the school as a self sustaining unit with regard to ICT enabled education. So far 90,000 computers are available in the schools of Kerala and IT@School Project started upgrading the infrastructure by using the ICT in School scheme of Govt of India . <\/p>\n\n