The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : 700 laptops distributed to students

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Tuesday, Feb 26, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

700 laptops distributed to students

Special Correspondent

PHOTO: K. MANIKANDAN

EAGER LEARNERS: Students of PSBB Millennium School in Chennai working on their new laptops. —

TAMBARAM: Is it possible for school students to walk into classrooms with a computer that is the size of a notebook?

Recently, a group of chirpy students received a note book-size laptop each as part of a joint initiative by PSBB (Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan) Millennium School, St. Thomas Mount and Educomp, a private company to integrate computers in the daily lives of school students.

A total of 700 laptops were distributed to students of Standard II to VI as part of Educomp’s ‘School one-on-one computing (O3) programme.’

Managing Director of Educomp Solutions Shantanu Prakash said the objective of the programme was to bring computers into the daily lives of students for sharpening their skills in academics and also improve the teacher-student interface.

“We do not intend doing away with the conventional methods of teaching, but the aim is to improve efficiency and effectiveness of collaborative learning,” Mr. Prakash said.

The company, which works with schools to implement innovative models to create and deliver content, had worked on the project for about an year and had conducted five pre-launch trials.

As PSBB Millennium School was their first partner for this project, they had distributed the classmate PCs free of cost. Principal of the school Sita Umamaheshwaran said the use of the computers would help teachers during the internal assessment of students.

To start with, the computers would be used to teach mathematics, English, science and social studies.

The content required for each of the subjects would be uploaded by a technical team. In addition to the conventional ‘chalk and talk’ method of teaching, students would be exposed to animated and three-dimensional visual inputs.

The computers were specially designed for this programme. In Tamil Nadu, they would be glad to distribute such computers to government schools but with support from the State government, the organisers said.

Asked if the cost of the computer would be passed on to the student, he said they intended making it part of the students’ kit.

They were also exploring the possibility of bringing down the price. Rukmani Motilal, the school’s advisor, was also present.

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