Poor schoolchildren leap over digital divide

BANGALORE: Basavaraju (14) does not speak English. Doesn''t even look like he is studying in the 10th standard, he looks so puny. But he can install and configure any operating system and is called a ‘mini hardware engineer’ by fellow students at the Government High School, Tubagere, Doddaballapur.
Lingappa (10) and three of his school mates do not understand English too.But they know all the icons in Windows — and they can recognise the symbols and create power point presentations. You can call that true cognitive learning!
Kids like these abound and at the Student Internet World (SIW), part of Bangalore IT.Com 2003, the burning excitement among them is palpable. With banners screaming ‘Get more done. Have more fun. Ask how today’, the SIW is all about getting schoolchildren ready to face a world of IT and technology, a few years down the line.
According to Ketan Sampat, president, Intel India, which is sponsoring the SIW, it is amazing how the children use technology. “They find such creative and imaginative ways that we are baffled most of the time.� “There was this girl from the slum, a first generation learner, who was using the computer which had a digital microscope attached to find out how an insect flies.
She had taken this fly, placed it under the microscope, got different digital frames made and using a Media Player, she made a movie out of it — just to study the way the fly flies. It is unbelievable but it is true and I saw it myself,� Sampat said.
For the 20,000 students who would be playing with computers for the next five days at Kanteerava Stadium, it is fun all the way. But, fun also results in making their life much better.
According to Sumitra Anganappa, headmistress, BCC Girls School, Murphy Town, where not many girls failed the high school exam, the computer skills they learnt in school came to their aid later. “Although these girls failed, they managed to get jobs as data entry operators in places like FoodWorld. If they had no basic computer skills, they would have been domestic servants earning Rs 300 or so, Now, they get about Rs 2,500 or so per month and that is huge money for them,� she pointed out.
And, if the SIW and such efforts are a tiny step for the government and MNCs to better the lives of these children, it is one big leap for them in life. All may not turn into software engineers but somewhere along the way, life could be better to them than it was to their parents, who would not even have touched a computer key.