Microsoft to enhance ICT adoption in Maharashtra

The state government has signed a MoU with Microsoft India to enhance ICT adoption in schools

Microsoft India has set up three state-of-the-art IT Academies, in Pune, Nagpur and Aurangabad, and trained over 92,000 teachers who in turn have taught over 46,00,000 students.

Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Minister for Education, Government of Maharashtra, said, “It is vital for Indian youth to be familiar with the same tools and technologies that their peers use around the world. This will help give them a competitive advantage.”

Under the new agreement, in addition to the three academies which will, over the next two years, train 6,000 teachers as well as 100,000 pre-service teachers, One educator from each cluster in the state will be required to undergo a 10-day training module in a classroom setup; and each of the trained resources can then further build ICT readiness among others educators in the cluster. Microsoft will conduct over 200 sessions at the district level over the next two years for training 6,000 resources in as many clusters.

The initiative will also focus on building employability readiness amongst students of classes 11th and 12th. There are approximately a million students enrolled in these two classes in Maharashtra and are eligible for this training. Under the agreement, Microsoft will help deploy the Microsoft Digital Literacy curriculum (DLC), a self learning multimedia based module which introduces the fundamentals of computing to a first time user. The students will be assessed once the modules have been completed, and awarded a Microsoft certificate if successful. Skill building initiative will be carried out (enhancement of soft skills such as English speaking and basic personality grooming, etc.)

A single login through Microsoft’s Live@Edu initiative will be provided, which will enable all students and teachers across the approximately 85,000 schools in the state to acquire e-mail IDs with school-specific domains and collaboration (through Office Live Workspace), and give the school tools for creating an online community. 50,000 technical students will benefit from Microsoft’s global program DreamSpark, under which a student can get access to the suite of Microsoft Software Development tools at no cost.