The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : National meet on computer education in schools

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 08, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

National meet on computer education in schools

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, SEPT. 7. Even as many States, particularly in the Northeastern, are inspired by the performance of Tamil Nadu in imparting computer education in schools, the first National Conference on Computer Education (NCCE) in schools will be held here on September 24 and 25. "It will showcase the best practices in the country and abroad to usher in the digital revolution and set an agenda for the future of computer education and e-learning," Vivek Harinarain, Tamil Nadu Information Technology Secretary, said here today.

He told a press conference that Ministers and Secretaries from 25 States and high-level delegations from 10 countries would participate in the conference being organised by the State Government, under the aegis of the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT). Invitations were extended to 500 schools. Of these, 270 responded favourably so far.

The public-cum-private partnership in imparting computer education to schoolchildren evolved by the State had become a national model, he said.

90 per cent success

Almost 80 per cent of the schools in the State, where computer education was provided, were in rural areas and the success level of students touched 90 per cent, Mr. Harinarain said. The curriculum was decided by the Government while training was given by computer education providers in the private sector. He attributed the success to availability of infrastructure, involvement of personnel and effective monitoring of the programme.

Coinciding with the conference, a national-level essay competitions would be held for two categories of students. "Computer in my life" was the topic assigned to students from standards VIII to X and "Computer education, the future scenario" was the subject for students in standards XI and XII. Around 5,000 students would participate.

E. Balagurusamy, Vice-Chancellor, Anna University, said entries for the essay competition had started coming. One hundred evaluators would be trained to assess the papers presented by the participants. Each evaluator would handle 50 essays and select the best five. Prizes would be given for the first three best essays in both categories.

Model replicated

Sudeep Jain, Managing Director, ELCOT, said the corporation successfully completed running of computer science teaching in 1,197 government higher secondary schools for five years. The model was replicated in many States across the country.

The NCCE was part of the State's annual information and communication technology event, `CONNECT 2004,' he said.

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