IIT Madras launches rural technology centres in Tamil Nadu

The centres that will train government school students of Classes 9 to 12 in computer science are the result of collaboration with Asha For Education. 

Pravartak Technologies Foundation of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has collaborated with Asha For Education to launch rural technology centres to take computer science literacy to government school students in rural areas of Tamil Nadu.  

Two Asha-IIT Madras Pravartak Rural Technology Centres were inaugurated at Kanakamma Chathram and Seethanjeri villages of Tiruvallur District, located about 60 km from Chennai, on February 11. These centres will spread the knowledge of technology and its benefits to rural areas of Tamil Nadu. The centres will train students of Classes 9 to 12. IIT Madras Pravartak Technologies Foundation is providing financial support for this project with technical support being envisaged as well.  

V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “IIT Madras is committed to working towards providing access to quality education and technology to students belonging to rural areas of our country. The setting up of these two rural technology centres mark the beginning of our journey.”  

Asha for Education is a worldwide action group formed to catalyse socio-economic change in India through the education of underprivileged children. It has been working with elementary and middle schools since 2015 to educate students in both digital literacy and computational thinking. The group uses advanced block-based programming tools such as ‘Scratch’ from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and ‘Blockly’ from Google to teach programming

Courses on digital literacy, programming in the offing 

Based on the assessment of students’ levels, the Asha team is planning to start two courses on basic digital literacy and basics of programming. While instructions will be given for two-thirds of the course, one-third of the course will be left for project work where children create a presentation or software programme of their own. 

These two basic courses will be followed up with other Code.org courses on animation, webpage design and hardware-based programming, among others. We will also eventually bring in more advanced technologies such as drones, 3-D printing, robotics and artificial intelligence, among others, to children.

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