These Centres will spread the knowledge of technology and its benefits to rural areas of Tamil Nadu. The Centres will train students of Classes 9 to 12," IIT Madras said.
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras Pravartak Technologies Foundation has partnered with Asha For Education to launch rural technology centres with an aim to take computer science literacy to remote and rural government school students in Tamil Nadu.
Two centres have been inaugurated on February 11 at Kanakamma Chathram and Seethanjeri Villages of Tiruvallur district.
“These Centres will spread the knowledge of technology and its benefits to rural areas of Tamil Nadu. The Centres will train students of Classes 9 to 12. IIT Madras Pravartak Technologies Foundation is providing financial support for this project with technical support being envisaged as well,” a statement from IIT Madras said.
Highlighting the key objectives of the initiative, Professor V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “IIT Madras is committed to working towards providing access to quality education and technology to students belonging to rural areas of our Country. The setting up of these two rural technology centres mark the beginning of our journey.”
Asha for Education is a worldwide action group that 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 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and ‘Blockly’ from Google to teach programming.
Speaking about their training initiatives for school students, Rajaraman Krishnan from Asha For Education said, “These tools are so easy to use that the Middle School students have mastered these in a few weeks and shown tremendous enthusiasm in learning. Asha expects to build on this expertise by using proven methodologies like the curriculum from ‘ code.org ’ that have been used and tested in other countries successfully. We also intend to use IIT’s experience and expertise in quality technical education.”
“We wanted to open the centres close to higher secondary schools so that the students will be able to attend courses in our centres in the evening after their school hours. Most children do not get any opportunity to learn computer science and other technologies. Even if they do it is taught without any hands-on experience with computers. We hope to provide these with our rural technology centres,which ” Mr Krishnan added.
Two centres have been inaugurated on February 11 at Kanakamma Chathram and Seethanjeri Villages of Thiruvallur district.
IIT Madras has a placement cell that looks after all the placement-related activities. IIT Madras placement cell provides placement opportunities to the final year students. The recruiters identify IIT Madras as one of the premier national centres of excellence and conduct many IIT Madras placement drives. IIT Madras placement cell has closed industry interaction and the faculty takes part in various consulting services. The institution has set high standards of excellence and has pushed the frontiers of teaching research and consulting in serving the nation in many of its technical and scientific areas. IIT Madras maintains strong relations with recruiters and always takes initiative on collaborative projects with the industry.
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