The Hindu : Karnataka News : Computer education: panel to be set up to improve Kannada use

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 29, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka

Computer education: panel to be set up to improve Kannada use

Staff Reporter

`Mahiti Sindhu' and `Project Shiksha' come under fire

BANGALORE: The Education Department has decided to set up a committee to improve the use of Kannada in computer education. It found that the education software distributed in rural areas relied too heavily on English making it difficult for students to understand.

The committee will comprise writers, journalists, language experts and software developers who will devise measures to further the use of Kannada in computer education in the State.

This came out of a meeting between officials of the Primary and Secondary Education Department and opponents of the Government's computer education schemes held last month.

Two initiatives of the Government, the `Mahiti Sindhu' and `Project Shiksha,' came under criticism at the meeting as being harmful to the development of Kannada software and the language itself.

The proposed `Project Shiksha', which is a joint venture between the State Government and Microsoft, trains teachers to be more proficient in computers. It is to be launched in a month.

Teachers using the software say they were having a problem translating words such as `keyboard,' `enter,' and `delete,' into Kannada without removing it from its specific context.

But Nandu Pradhan, Director, Public Sector for Microsoft, says the English education programmes such as the one developed for `Project Shiksha' recognises the difficulties teachers face in trying to translate some computer terms.

"We have already trained around 30,000 teachers across the country."

Chandrashekar Kambar, noted Kannada author and former Vice-Chancellor of Kannada University at Hampi, says the computer software used in projects such as `Mahiti Sindhu,' is detrimental to Kannada language.

N. Anbarasan, the Chief Executive Officer of Applesoft, a company that develops software in Indian languages pointed out that most often in computer education projects Kannada software is not considered.

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