Computer Aided Learning

The Concept:
The Computer Aided Learning Program (CALP) creates an environment, where learning and assessment is fun and the opportunities to learn is equitable among the rural and urban children. The CALP is primarily introduced in rural government elementary schools covering the classes 1 to 7 to attract and retain children and also in the process, enhance the quality of learning by making “Learning Play”, “Assessment Fun” and “Equal knowledge for all”.

The Objective and Process:
The main objective of the CAL programme is to attract the children, retain them in the schools and to improve the quality of the education through animated multimedia based educational content. CALP objective is sought to be achieved through story based, animated cartoons, interactive games and riddles with the use of multimedia features. Spontaneous, self initiated and self regulated, the three critical aspects that make an activity play are integrated in CALP to make Learning Play and use of cartoons, story line and music is intended to make CALP as self initiated and engaged in learning.

Benefits :

• This program will improve the IT literacy in the rural areas particularly and will go a long way in removing the digital divide in the state

• Improve the interest of students in school studies and thus increase school attendance and better performance in examinations

• It will improve the teaching process with the integration of the IT in the class

• Improve student and teacher learning and productivity

• Make the children better prepared for getting into secondary education and continue with Computer Education at a higher level

The basic objectives of this activity are :

• To make the Students and Teachers familiar with Computer

• To teach the subjects through computers

• To use the educational software for hard spots

• To enable the government school students especially rural area students to be at par with the urban and advance school students

Process initiated
In the year 2003-04, the procurement of 2934 computers was made. These computers were installed in 517 Upper Primary schools. The distribution of computers was as mentioned below :
District level school - 10 computers + 1 printer
Block level school - 6 computers + 1 printer
Cluster level school - 5 computers + 1 printers
In this fashion, a computer lab was established in 25 district level, 224 block level and 268 cluster level schools.

After installation of computers, SSA Gujarat has tied up with INTEL company for the basic training of computer operating to teachers. In this programme, 517 Head masters were oriented for 1 day regarding the advantages of computer and its usage. Immediately after that 517 teachers were trained for 10 days regarding the fundaments of computes, MS Office, Internet etc. These 517 teachers were trained by the INTEL trainers. There after, as per TOR with INTEL, each of 517 teachers trained 10 more teachers for 10 days for same syllabi. As a result, 5687 teachers were fully prepared for the use of computers.
After completing the teachers training, the trained teachers started using Powerpoint for preparing the Lession card.

As a next activity, SSA Gujarat has tied up with Azim Premji Foundation for the development of content. A series of meetings were held at various level. Finally, 23 topics were identified, which were already prepared by foundation in Hindi and English medium. For giving the local touch to the software, the scripts of all 23 topics were re-written in Gujarati language with the help of 25 teachers. Finally, after the evaluation for 2-3 times, these 23 topics are ready. The same will be implemented in 517 schools in the coming academic session. For this the training of teachers will be completed in vacation period.
In the year 2004-05, 200 more cluster level schools were covered by procuring 1000 computers (5 computers + 1 printer per school). The above mentioned software will also be implemented in these 200 schools.

In the year 2005-06, the same programme has taken up in BOOT model. The agency has been identified who is responsible for installation/maintenance of hardware, development of educational content, teachers training, supply of stationeries etc. 500 schools have been covered in this programme.

Getting the encouraging results, the State Govt. decided to expand the project on large scale. The Education Dept., State Govt, decided to cover more 4061 schools in 2006-07.