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"We
Try To Make The Learning Process Exciting"
Azim Premji Foundation aims at making
a tangible impact on
identified social issues by working in active partnership with the
government and other sections of the society. The foundation, set up
with financial resources contributed by Wipro Corporation chairman Azim
Premji, believes that education is the vital element in the development
and progress of our country.
The programmes of the foundation revolve
around creating
effective and scalable models that improve the quality of learning in
rural schools and ensure satisfactory ownership by the community in the
management of schools. Azim Premji Foundation chief executive officer
Dileep Ranjekar spoke to Saikat Neogi about the foundation’s work and
mission. Excerpts from the interview:
What is the foundation’s focus area of
work?
Improvement
in the quality of education has the highest potential to motivate
children to be in the school and become more creative individuals. The
foundation believes that creating significant improvement in children’s
education in the schools will give impetus to universalisation of
elementary education.
How is the work done?
We make effort in the areas of
training, development of education system and innovative utilisation of
technology, creating models for incentive-oriented learning, building
capacity through planning processes at the grassroot level, and
effectively using research, academic, advocacy and communication tools
to augment the efforts.
What are the projects that the foundation
has taken up?
We
have initiated various projects for rural schools such as Learning
Guarantee Programme, Accelerated Learning Programme and Computer
Assisted Learning Centres in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and
Orissa. In Learning Guarantee Programme, incentives are given to
schools if they score well on attendance, enrollment and learning. In
this, over 1,903 lower and higher primary schools run by the Karnataka
government are covered and over 3,80,000 children have benefited. The
evaluation is done by us and a cash incentive of Rs 20,000 is given to
the winning school.
What is Computer Assisted Learning Centre?
This
concept was conceived in response to the need of the people in rural
Karnataka. In this, over 300 schools are covered in Karnataka, 200
schools in Andhra Pradesh, 300 in Tamil Nadu and over 900 schools in
Orissa. By the end of 2007, we expect to cover about 85,000 schools all
over the country. Through this programme we try to make the learning
process exciting and fundamentally strong through various IT and
educational tools. This also attracts children to school and makes the
learning more fun-oriented. In Accelerated Learning Programme, over
1,029 schools in Karnataka are covered and over 70,000 children have
benefited.
What is the role of IT in your scheme of
things?
Innovative,
high quality educational software content will contribute to
improvement in learning through interactive, self-paced and joyful
learning. Research done by our foundation in rural areas of South
Karnataka reveals that parents wanted their children to receive good
education and know English and computers. Teachers were more articulate
and said that if academic content can be provided in an interactive
multimedia format it would attract children to come to school regularly
and learn well. Based on the foundation’s experience in Computer
Assisted Learning Centres in rural schools, we have found that children
there like the software content that promotes academic learning and it
happens without their conscious knowledge or effort.
This
interview appeared in the Financial Express, issue dated 21 March, 2004
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