Rajasthan gets its first IT academy

Opened in Jaipur, this academy would be central point for
providing IT training to teachers across the state

Education department of government of Rajasthan and Micro­soft
Corporation India has announced the formal launch of Microsoft IT academy in the
state of Rajasthan. The IT academy situated in Jaipur will serve to be a pivotal
point for imparting IT training to teachers across the state.

The IT Academy was inaugurated by State CM Vasundhara Raje.
She was accompanied by Ghanshyam Tiwari, Minister of Education; Vasudev Devnani,
Minister of State for Education; Peter Moore, MD, Public Sector, Microsoft Asia
Pacific and Rohit Kumar, Country Head — Public Sector, Microsoft India
Corporation Pvt Ltd.

Under the MoU, signed between these two last year, over the
next five years Micro-soft will accelerate IT integrat-ion in education amongst
8000 teachers and over 400,000 students (from Class III to Class XII) across
3,000 state government schools. As per the agree­ment with the govt of
Rajasthan, Microsoft is committed to offer a 12 days training program free of
cost for participating teachers to equip them to use techno­logy in teaching
students in a classroom environment.

Concerned officials infor­med that the Jaipur IT Aca­demy
is located at Radhakrish-nan Shiksha Sankul, JLN Marg covering an area of over
3000 sq ft. It is a world-class facility equipped with a state-of-the-art IT lab
complete with latest hard­ware, software, curricu-lum and staff for effective
delivery of IT training for school­teachers. While 20 PCs will be used for the
routine training process, a laptop has been provided to the IT Acad-emy Manager
who is required to visit various schools across the state to ensure consis­tency
in delivery process.  To ensure
wider participation and local relevance, the IT training courseware is trans­lated
in Hindi in partnership with the state education department.

Since the MoU signing in August last year, Microsoft has
already trained over 400 teachers. In addition to the training at the IT
Academy, Microsoft has also started teacher training at five DIET centers in the
state at Sikar, Sirhohi, Sri Ganganagar, Bhilwara and Jhlalwar districts.

Commenting on the part­ner­ship, Raje said, “Our
partnership with Microsoft compliments our govern­ment's unique focus for
leveraging technology to create a skilled resource base in our state comprising
of the next generation of IT profess-ionals. Driven by this vision, our
Rajasthan educa­tion initi-ative is focused on enabling widespread advan­ce­ments
in the education sector. Our partnership with Microsoft is a key deliverable
here and we are confident that the IT Academy set up today will encourage early
adoption of technologies by both students and teachers across govern-ment
schools in the state.”

However Tiwari was happy to announce that in the short
period of one year, finalizing the form and content of the REI and launching the
imple­mentation strategy has been a great achievement. Itera­ting the
Rajasthan Education Initiatives aims, Vasudev Devnani clarified that it is a new
venture for engaging global and local partners from the private corporate
sector, foundations, NGOs in innovative multi stake holder partnerships to
quantitatively support education in the State of Rajasthan.

Elaborating on Microsoft's vision for IT education, Moore
said “We firmly believe techno-logy holds tremendous poten-tial for
transforming the tradit-ional classroom environment and helping students and
teac-hers learn more in a dynamic and interactive manner. Towa-rds meeting this
objective, our Partners-in-Learning program is geared to deliver the latest
technology solutions in ways that are affordable and acces-sible for the
education comm-unity, and ultimately help create an educational exper-ience that
connects, removes limitations and creates oppor-tunities today and for the
future.” Commenting on the India momentum of Micro-soft's
Partners-in-Learning, Rohit Kumar, said “Under our Part­ners-in-Learning pro­gram
we seek to work in close part­nership with state govern­ments and education
depart­ments for accelerating IT literacy amongst students and teachers across
govern­ment schools. Today we are collaborating with nine state governments and
have trained over 52,000 plus teachers and reached out to over 2.6 million
students.”

DQW News Bureau Jaipur, March 8