The Government Girls' High School at West Marredpally in Secunderabad turned a new chapter six months ago when it became a part of the 50x15 global campaign, which intends to provide net access to 50 per cent of the unreached by 2015.
Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which launched the campaign with many partners, is doing its bit for the 50x15 drive through learning laboratories in schools and communities.
In India, two schools in Bangalore and Hyderabad have been chosen as the site for setting up these labs, which provide support to the students of government schools to learn to use computers and access the internet.
The school, which did not even have power supply till a few months ago, now has 15 computers with a neat laboratory.
The laboratory is the favourite place for many students who hone their creative skills, paint, write and piece together photos, graphics and text on Power Point. Those in Class VIII and IX, search the net for some relevant text from their syllabus.
The happy face of B Archana, a class IX student of the school, tells what change computers are bringing to their personalities. "Computers are the biggest attraction to come to school. We are learning new things," she said. She and her friends have never missed an opportunity to be at the computer laboratory in the past six months, when computers were first introduced at the school. They spent a month of their summer holidays being at the Learning Laboratory, as the computer laboratory is called.
This was set up by AMD and the American India Foundation, an NGO which wants to bridge the digital divide among students.
Rayees Fatima, the computer instructor at the school, helps the students with the concepts and gives them time-bound goals to test their progress. About 400 students, notwithstanding the 40:1 student to computer ratio, use these computers. In addition, about 14 teachers of the school are also being oriented in using computers.
"By this year-end, we hope to achieve the larger objective of changing the pedagogy, reduce repetitive work of teachers in preparing question banks and using computers for other regular chores of school administration," says Swarna Kapoor, AIF Andhra Pradesh regional coordinator. AIF and AMD will support the programme for three years and help the school adopt a sustainable way to run it.
For a school which had to be persuaded to take up the project, Principal E Andalu today is all praise for the change it has brought in the students' lives.
Guruprasad Katte, manager (procurement), AMD Research and Development Center India, does not promise any new projects. "We are always ready with support for anyone who wants to set up a lab. But the kind of material support we have provided in Bangalore and Hyderabad is part of our CSR and will not be done in other projects," adds the company's general manager (marketing), Deepanshu Sharma.
The two learning labs now cater to 700 students, 400 in Hyderabad, despite the obligation to follow a 1: 40 computer-student ration.
The Andhra Pradesh government, on its part, runs a programme to equip students with computers. School Education Director P Bhanu Murthy says the government has already identified 5,000 government schools including 135 in Hyderabad to supply one server and ten nodes to each.
