Karnataka - Bangalore

Sikshana to launch Personal Chip

Bangalore: Sikshana Foundation, a non-governmental organisation working with government schools in Karnataka, will launch a new project called Personal Chip here on Monday.

Under the project, which has been taken up on an experimental basis, over 1,000 schoolchildren from 120 higher primary schools in Kanakapura taluk will get a 2GB pen drive each.

“Children in schools in rural areas are affected from shortage of reading and writing supplies. The pluggable memory chip provides an affordable, rich medium for authoring their projects across multiple academic years. They can continue to work on their projects without interruption as computer technology and software environment changes rapidly during their educational career,” said Prasanna V.R., chief operating officer of Sikshana.

Unlike games, animations or videos, the authoring environment encourages children to observe, think, plan and design their exercises. A child needs access to a computer only during the analysis and recording stage allowing a school or a group of children to share a computer/ laptop, just as they would share a microscope. When a computer breaks down, a child can move the chip to another computer and continue with his work.

The software on this memory chip is based on public domain contributions from people around the world, and will continue to evolve and adapt in public domain.

Along with the launch of the personal chip project, 230 children from these schools will receive Rs. 150 a month scholarship for all the three years of their high school study. These children are from the 84 new schools that Sikshana adopted in June 2008, and will be in addition to the 270 children under the scholarship programme.

The project will be launched at Yavanika by Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri. Minister for Labour Bacche Gowda, MLC S. Ravi and MLA D.K. Shivakumar are expected to participate in the programme.

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