Thiruvananthapuram: The government has set in motion the process to make Kerala the country’s first digital state. All the classes from standard 8 to 12 in 45,000 classrooms and IT labs in 4,775 government and aided schools will become hi-tech at a total budget of Rs 553 crore. They include 2,685 high schools, 1,701 higher secondary schools and 389 vocational higher secondary schools. Mr K. Anvar Sadath, executive director, IT@School project, submitted a detailed project report to Dr Usha Titus, secretary, general education department, to be implemented by the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board.
The pilot implementation of the programme is progressing in four constituencies — Alappuzha, Puthukkad, Kozhikode North and Thaliparamba. The IT@School had completed a detailed school survey in November and December last year. The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) hardware deployment for 4,775 schools would be undertaken in three phases. Mr Sadath told this newspaper that the first phase would be completed by April-May covering 10,000 classrooms in 1,000 schools. The second will cover 25,000 classrooms in 2,500 schools from July to September and the third will cover the remaining schools from October to December.
The schools have to ensure secured classrooms, tiled flooring, secured ceiling, painting of walls, electrification and shelf for the ICT equipment. “The government will immediately start the setting up of IT labs in over 9,500 government and aided primary and upper primary schools,” education minister C. Ravindranath said. The ICT facilities will be deployed in the schools in each phase. The classroom would be equipped with laptop, multimedia projector, whiteboard and sound system. The hi-tech IT lab would feature desktop computers with UPS, multifunction printers, LCD TV and a HD camera, Mr Sadath said.
Specific security features would be installed in schools. The IT labs and classrooms would be connected via network through a central server in the lab, which would allow sharing of information. High speed fibre-based broadband internet would be made available in all classrooms. The IT@School has also prepared detailed plans for capacity building, development and deployment of ICT content, resource portal, e-governance and e-learning.
