Kerala schools are embracing the modern day digital technologies from the field of education at a pace higher than any other state. Soon, more than 40,000 classrooms in the states will be equipped with advanced gadgets, including laptops and multimedia projectors and all this is a part of state government’s ambitious ‘Hi-Tech schoolʼ project.
Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE), formerly known as IT@School project, is special purpose vehicle designed by the state government to help schools adopt latest IT technologies for the education of the children.
K Anvar Sadath, vice chairman and executive director, KITE, said “northern Malappuram district tops in the number of hi-tech classrooms (5,096), followed by neighbouring Kozhikode (4,105) and Thrissur district (3,497). We have completed the deployment of laptops, multimedia projectors, mounting kits, USB Speakers etc to 40,083 classrooms and additionally 16,500 laptops for the computer labs are also being deployed the week.”
He further said that out of 4,752 government and aided high schools, higher secondary and vocational higher secondary schools all the classrooms in 3,676 schools have been made high tech.
He also said that there are 59 schools in which not a single classroom has been made high-tech because approval to renovate the classrooms of these schools is pending from the authorities.
“As a requisite for the hi-tech school programme, the schools have to ensure safe and secure classrooms only after which the ICT (Information Communication Technology) equipment would be provided to them,” Sadath said. In the meantime, laptops and projectors will be deployed to these schools in certain proportions.
Teachers will be allowed to take the equipment from the labs to the classroom as and when required.
“With such a plan in place, all students in Class 8 to 12 in Kerala would be able to make use of hi-tech classroom facility from this month onwards,” Sadath said.
A total of 13,786 schools have also been equipped with the high speed broadband connection.