IT-in-Education Initiative to Benefit Rural Karnataka

Karnataka, India, 6 June 2008 — The Singapore International Foundation (SIF) and Swiss Bank UBS are sending four volunteers to rural Karnataka, to promote the use of IT in classroom learning and prepare a core group of locals in becoming IT champions to their peers.

SIF volunteers are currently in Karnataka’s Chitradurga District, some 200km away from Bangalore, India. The Singapore volunteers - teaching staff from Tanjong Katong Girls’ School and Tao Nan Primary School, will conduct two workshops from June 6–10 under the SIF-UBS IT In Education Initiative.

The first is subject-based IT training, where 30 local teachers from higher primary schools will learn to design IT-integrated lesson plans. The Singapore teachers will demonstrate how open tools can be used to design lessons, after which their trainees will try crafting their own lesson plans, based on the school syllabus.

The second workshop is to train ‘E-Champions’ among the community. It targets a core group of 10 youths, students and teachers, considered to be the more IT savvy among the community. These ‘E-Champions’ will learn to use resources such as digital video-recording and internet tools such as wikis. In turn, they will teach what they’ve learnt to their peers.

Living in an arid region and in the poorer part of Karnataka, it is hoped this learning will provide these villagers better prospects for work.

The India partner for both workshops is Chaitanya, an NGO that supports the local low-income population in the areas such as IT and micro-enterprise loans.

The two-year project will consist of a total of four training frames beginning this June. It aims to train 50 local primary school teachers in basic IT literacy, and 30 students in Microsoft Office skills such as Powerpoint. By the end of the training, teachers will be able to design IT lessons using open tools and will carry on to produce two IT integrated lessons each curriculum year.

This project is an expansion of Phase I of a SIF-UBS IT In Education Initiative project that began in July 2006 (and concluded in December 2007). In the earlier project, also in Karnataka, SIF facilitated the sending of volunteers who went to Kondlahalli Government Secondary School to train its teachers in using IT tools to enhance learning among students.