‘Hi School Kuttikoottam’ to promote ICT among students, Kerala IT@Schools next steps....
Gurumurthy K
As information and communication technology-enabled learning (ICT) becomes more widespread, IT@School has come up with ‘Hi School Kuttikoottam’, a collective of students to ensure their participation and promote interest in ICT activities.
Modelled as a permanent set-up on the lines of Student Police Cadets, it aims at bringing one lakh students into the network this year, making it the largest in the country, IT@School in a statement said.
Education Minister C. Ravindranath said the collective would be strengthened as part of the General Education Protection Mission, besides ensuring students’ participation in various activities.
Among its aims is creating an environment to facilitate in-depth learning of ICT, providing students with the experience of group and collaborative learning, improving ICT-enabled learning at schools, ensuring students’ participation in resolving technical issues at schools, making students aware of safe Internet use and ills such as cybercrime, and equipping them to lead campaigns, a statement from IT@School Executive Director K. Anvar Sadath said.
Students will also be given an opportunity to undertake various language computing programmes.
Hi School Kuttikoottam envisions offering training to students from IT clubs in each school in five areas – animation and multimedia, hardware, electronics, language computing, and Internet and cybersecurity. The training will be constantly monitored by the IT@School project.
At schools, a committee with the parent-teacher association (PTA) president as chairman and headmaster as convener will coordinate the programmes of the collective. School IT coordinators will lead the daily activities, which will be taken up without affecting class timings.
IT@School will make arrangements for the students to create awareness and provide training to fellow students and guardians in ICT, Mr. Anvar Sadath said.
It aims at increasing the membership to two lakh students next academic year.
Organisations such as Google, Start-up Mission (Electronics), and Swathanthra Malayalam Computing have promised their support to the programme.
IT@School will submit projects for expanding the programme, making use of the corporate social responsibility funds of various companies, and availing funds available under the Centre’s Digital India programme to make hardware available to students.
At least 20 students should be part of the network from each school. The maximum is 12 per cent of the high school section strength. The first phase of training will be over before March 31.