The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Hardware clinics for school computers

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Wednesday, Sep 03, 2008
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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Hardware clinics for school computers

Staff Reporter

IT@School project’s idea may save lakhs of rupees for the government

— Photo: S. Mahinsha

Fxing it: Technicians attend to computers at a hardware clinic jointly organised by Keltron and the IT@School project in Thiruvananthapuram.

Thiruvananthapuram: The IT@School project is setting an example through its hardware clinics. By repairing damaged computers in high schools in the State, the clinics may save lakhs of rupees for the government.

The clinics prove to be a boon to hundreds of government schools which lack expertise and money to get the computers repaired.

The project decided to start the clinics as part of its scheme to give broadband connectivity to the high schools. The clinics will be held in two places in each educational district. The school authorities can get the computers repaired there.

A three-day clinic began at the Government Model Lower Primary School here on Tuesday. Nearly 250 damaged computers from schools in various parts of the district were brought for repairs.

“We conducted a detailed survey in November last year to assess the IT infrastructure in high schools. We found that almost 5,000 computers available in the schools were not functional. Half of them were completely damaged, while the others could be repaired and revived,” said K. Anvar Sadath, Executive Director, IT@School.

“The IT@School project is bearing all the expenses for the repairs.”

The clinics use the parts of dumped computers to train school IT coordinators in hardware.

With this, the project aims to build up expertise in schools to maintain and repair computers in their computer labs. Fifty-two master trainers will train the 2,400 coordinators by September-end.

“So far, maintaining computers used to be a big problem for government schools such as ours. But with the hardware training, we will be able to rectify many of the problems ourselves,” said Akhileshan K., teacher in Government High School, Paruthipally.

Mr. Akhileshan came to the clinic with five damaged computers.

An Internet module training will soon follow for the coordinators. By November-end, they will train other teachers back in their schools.

“We are expecting to launch Internet-based training for students in high schools by December this year. BSNL [Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.], which is providing broadband connectivity, have covered 70 per cent of the high schools in the State already,” Mr. Sadath said.

“We are planning to provide laptops to 1,016 government high schools by the year-end using funds from the Rs. 50-crore central assistance we received last year under the School ICT [information and communication technology] scheme.”

He said IT@School was planning broadband connectivity for higher secondary and vocational higher secondary schools in the State by January and in upper primary schools by the next academic year. This would be done using the Rs. 153-crore central assistance IT@School received in 2008 under the ICT scheme.

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