The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Educationists' network to help schools

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 06, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Educationists' network to help schools

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, APRIL 5. Bangalore's major companies, information technology firms included, now have an opportunity to prove their commitment to the community around them.

Corporates, Indian and multinational, are looking for opportunities to show their corporate social responsibility, and education can be one, Annamalai Muthiah, founder, International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) India, said here on Tuesday.

ISTE India, part of the global ISTE network of educationists and schools, is out to help schools to use technology to transform themselves and shape their students for the future, he said. To motivate its 500 members in India further, Presidential Awards for Transforming Education have been instituted, inspired by the President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's vision for the country's future.

The awards will seek out pockets of excellence found in district, State, national and international schools in the country and showcase their standards and best practices for use by other schools. "The prize money is likely to be large in each category and the winning schools are required to share half the amount to help other schools in their region reach similar standards of excellence,'' Mr. Muthiah said.

The vision

The broader vision behind the awards is that every child in the country should have an equal chance to excel in school and afterwards, in his or her life. "In the globalised era we live in, we use global vision as the foundation for evaluation... the initiative will benchmark excellence in schools'' he added.

Since last year, ISTE India has been promoting this vision in schools across most of India, and one example was of a senior marketing executive deciding to bring his skills to help girl children from underprivileged families in a remote town in U.P. both study and learn skills to make products that can be marketed to pay for their education and hostel expenses. There could be similar success stories elsewhere in the country, and the awards will recognise such efforts, Mr. Muthiah, who was a Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford University, said.

Leslie Conery, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, ISTE, U.S., said: "We intend to link together current efforts in India and elsewhere using the networking and communication capabilities now available through online conferencing and personal discussions." Asha Nair, who heads the Karnataka Chapter, said nearly 150 schools in the State, most of them in Bangalore, were members, making it the largest chapter in the country.

Symposium today

ISTE is planning a series of symposia as a forerunner to the awards process and one will be held here on Wednesday on the theme, "Schooling for the 21st Century.''

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