Thiruvananthapuram: The efforts to turn the state into the first fully-digital education state in the country are progressing in the right direction. As part of it, the Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) has kickstarted the hi-tech school programme of the education department in 125 schools in four constituencies - Alappuzha, Puthukkad, Kozhikode North and Thaliparamba on a pilot basis. The KITE has imparted subject-specific ICT training to all 1,859 teachers in the four constituencies.
This was followed by ICT-based training to 85,343 teachers from high school, higher secondary, vocational higher secondary and upper primary sections. In addition, 28,434 students were trained in five domains, including animation, electronics, hardware, cyber safety and Malayalam computing during the Onam vacation. Earlier this year, 62,240 students were given a one-day awareness training on all the five topics, which was followed by a two-day training for 62,011 students, said KITE vice-chairman and executive director, K. Anvar Sadath. The programme was a major highlight of the public education rejuvenation mission of the state government, aimed at upgrading all classrooms to international standards. The KITE, formerly IT@School, was identified as the implementing agency, it being the pioneer of ICT-enabled education in the state for over a decade.
The detailed project report for the programme for 4,775 schools at a total cost of Rs 493.50 crore, prepared by KITE, was approved by the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board ( KIIFB), the nodal agency for monitoring all government projects. Each classroom would be equipped with laptop, multimedia projector, whiteboard and sound system. The hi-tech IT labs would feature desktop computers with UPS, multifunction printers, LCD TV and an HD camera. 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 KITE had conducted a detailed survey covering all schools in the state in November and December 2016 to assess the actual status of ICT equipment and requirements of each school. Based on the recommendations of the technical committee constituted by government, it was decided to undertake pilot implementation of the project in 125 schools. The KITE also developed Samagra resource portal which functions as a repository of educational contents for students from class 1 to 12 as part of the project.
Samagra featured e-resources, textbooks and question banks in the form of images, videos, animations, interactive narrations and tutorials. Till date, Samagra has a total of 5,585 contents in four mediums of instruction- Malayalam, English, Tamil and Kannada. The focus is more on the secondary level in which contents have been uploaded up to the second term of this year. Specific content development workshops are conducted at various levels at regular intervals. The KITE has also successfully undertaken the pilot implementation and initiated the ICT hardware deployment in the remaining 4,650 schools. The specification of each ICT equipment was finalised by the technical committee after various meetings.
On August 31, the KITE released the e-tender for 60,250 laptops and 43,750 projectors in the e-procurement portal of the government. A pre-bid meeting with the prospective bidders was held on September 11. Further steps of the tender are scheduled onOctober 12. The deployment of laptops and projectors is planned in three phases. As many as 30,000 laptops and 20,000 projectors would be deployed in November 2017, 20,000 laptops and 10,000 projectors by January 2018 and 10,250 laptops and 13,750 projectors by April 2018. The KITE also provided high-speed broadband connectivity to 1,030 higher secondary and vocational higher schools in August. However, critics say that only government schools have been included in the project and that aided schools have been kept out of its ambit.
Mr P. Harigovindan, president, pro-Congress Kerala Pradesh School Teachers Association, said that for aided schools, they could have to utilised the challenge fund. For this, the schools would have to raise Rs 50 crore through MLA fund, MP fund, PTAs, school management committee or alumni association. The government would provide a balancing amount as matching grants. Moreover, the government has not yet released the guidelines for aided schools for availing of the fund, Mr Harigovindan said.
Mr N. Sreekumar, general secretary, pro- CPI All-Kerala School Teachers Union (AKSTU), said that though efforts had been put in place for implementing the programme at the state level, it has not translated to the grassroots level. The effort was to complete 40,000 smart class rooms in 1,000 schools covering all Assembly constituencies within five years. It is doubtful if this objective could be achieved at the current speed, said Mr Sreekumar.
E-waste poses major challenge
The major challenge for the government during the implementation of the hi-tech classrooms is the e-waste management. The Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) had tied up with the Clean Kerala Company of the state government to dispose of over one crore kilograms of e-waste from over 10,000 schools and educational offices in Kerala. It has been reported that the e-waste which has accumulated during the past two decades eats up a huge space of IT labs, besides obstructing the lab activities. In the first drive of e-waste disposal which was held on August 24, a total of 12,500 kg was disposed of from five locations, KITE vice-chairman and executive director K. Anvar Sadath told Deccan Chronicle.
The locations were Thiruvananthapuram, Alappuzha, Puthukkad, Kozhikode North and Thaliparamaba where the hi-tech school programme was piloted. Equipment such as desktop computers, CRT monitors, laptops, desktop cabinets, drives, printers, projectors, UPS, camera, speaker system, television, network components and generators were being included in the e-waste category. Effective monitoring and support systems, which are essential for ICT-enabled education, have also been implemented by the KITE.
The Clean Kerala Company collects the e-waste in batches of 500 kg from schools for which neighbouring schools will be clustered. Equipment having a valid warranty or annual maintenance contract are not listed under e-waste. Also the e-waste has been excluded from the stock registers maintained in schools and marked as 'unusable item-removed as e-waste'. The KITE has undertaken an online survey to capture the quantity of e-waste in each school and to collect them as batches and this exercise was completed by July 15.
The Sampoorna school management software is the ideal example which captures every minute detail of students in all schools. This year, the government had made it compulsory for all schools to upload the details of all students in Sampoorna. Additional details such as teacher's data, administrative details, infrastructure details and attendance would be added into Sampoorna.
Hi-tech plan loaded on FOSS
The hi-tech school programme is fully loaded on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The IT@School GNU/Linux operating system based on Ubuntu is pre-loaded in all laptops and desktops for the schools. Beyond normal operating system functions, this is an integrated package that contains applications like office packages, database applications, DTP, graphics and imaging software, sound recording, video editing, animation packages, integrated development environment (IDEs) for programming, web server and database server, geographical information system (GIS) etc. This also contains educational software like Geogebra, Phet, Stellarium , Kalzium, Marble, Razmol, Gplates, Gcomprise, Pysio Game, Dr Geo and Celestia.
The proprietary version of the software would have cost Rs .1, 50,000 per machine for licence fee. Hence the savings this year, considering 60,250 machines, is Rs 900 crore. The free software licence gives the general public also an opportunity to copy, distribute and share the content and use it as they wish. "IT@School would not have been able to come up with such extensive ICT education programme if the proprietary software was in place. We are ready to support other countries and states in extending these programmes," says Mr K. Anvar Sadath.
IT had become part of the high school curriculum in Kerala by 2003. Though the FOSS-based education started by 2005, it was made mandatory by 2007 with the government making it official with an order. Thus Kerala has become the world's first state with the largest deployment of FOSS in the education sector as part of the ICT-enabled education being implemented by IT@School in high school section in the state. All e-governance applications are also FOSS-based.
