Government school students hold court at IIT-Madras

A project propelled by a group of Chennai-based volunteers brought students from rural pockets to showcase their digital and programming skills at IIT-M Research Park

On a bright Wednesday morning, the auditorium at IIT Madras Research Park was abuzz with excitement. But it was not industry leaders or PhD students talking about their innovations and ideas. Instead, it was a group of 75 government school students who had come to demonstrate their skills in computational thinking, presentation and teamwork.

The schoolchildren had received six months training through a unique project run by the Chennai chapter of Asha, a non-government organisation that has been working to improve access to quality education.

And with the school year drawing to a close, it was time for these students to showcase their prowess and learning at a competition organised for both junior and senior categories. Fifteen presentations, 12 Scratch programming projects and 12 advanced computing projects were selected for the finals from about 180 projects that the students had submitted.

The digital literacy competition was called “RTC Impressions”, with RTC standing for rural technology centres. In these RTCs, free computer courses are taught to the government school students. As a part of their six-month long courses, the students develop a detailed project.

“Project work is not only an evaluation tool but is also a very important instructional tool,” says Rajaraman Krishnan, one of the core volunteers of Asha Chennai.

Some of the students were from Asha-supported schools. In these schools, the organisation has offered Computer Science teaching support with a collection of content already available free on the web and mapped to the appropriate lessons for each class.

IIT-M Pravartak and Asha run six RTCs, four in Thiruvallur district and two in Thoothukudi district, from where the children travelled to take part in the contest in Chennai. Seeing the work done by other students and interactions with judges provided much-needed exposure to the students.