In India, too, SchoolsOnline.org (SOL) is making rapid strides.

Within six months, this philanthropic project begun in the US by Kamran Elahian, has provided 50 mid-level under-resourced schools in Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad with access to innovative learning tools that use information and communication technologies.

Says SOL Country Manager Srimathi Prasad: “The idea is to bring the Internet to the underprivileged. When Net-enabled services boom, we do not want this segment of society to be left out. We want to help them access the latest innovations today, not ten years later.”

So, how does SOL help make this happen? It sets up free Internet Learning Centers (ILCs) for teachers and students. Each ILC has ten PCs, a scanner and two printers. SOL also takes care of LAN set up, ISP connections for a year, teacher training for a week (in conjunction with Intel’s Educom) and maintenance for three years.

It then makes a schedule of learning and deliverables for each school and reviews progress via meetings, reports and presentations. “Many schools we approached had very little knowledge of the Internet. If we merely asked them to allow children to chat, email and use the Net to learn and communicate, they would not be willing to handle the burden. By involving school curricula, teacher training and students, we are removing the negative connotation associated with the Internet,” says Prasad.

The school selection criteria are rigid and meticulous: schools have to be under-resourced with a gender balance; charge fees less than Rs 600; and have physical and technical infrastructure. They should also allow two neighbouring schools to use the facility. After school hours, the facility would be used for commercial purposes to sustain expenses after the first year.

Mumbai co-coordinator Sushila Sharma had a tough time convincing schools about SOL’s motives. “Some schools kept questioning me about what the catch was -- Why did SOL want to give away costly equipment?”

The selected schools are now grateful for their ILC labs. They have discovered technology is a cool way to get teachers and students to do ambitious things.

Forty-year-old teacher Celine D’Souza of St Anthony’s High School, Mumbai, learned to email, browse Web sites and use search engines for reference work. She used her new skills to put together a Power Point project on the Indus Valley Civilization. “History is a very boring subject. But when I showed students this project with information and colour pictures downloaded from Encarta and other sites, they requested me to convert all their topics into projects.”

Besides helping improve teaching methods, the SOL experience is also impacting the personal lives of teachers.

Champak Nath, a 69-year-old Bangalore teacher and school committee member, says the training has changed her personal life: “When my grandchildren talked about using the Internet and sending email, I felt ignorant. Now, we only talk about Web sites and exchange email.”

But altering a teaching style, to incorporate new technology, can be rough on some. “It’s uncomfortable for teachers nearing retirement,” says a Mumbai trainer, Shalaka Joshi. St Anthony’s science teacher Tara Kodikar found it “tough to stay back after school hours and concentrate on learning the Net.”

Younger teachers, who according to Joshi are keener to learn the new tools, find little time to use them to the maximum. Monalisa D’Mello of St Catherine’s High School, Mumbai says, “We bring students to the labs to view projects on tough topics only after having taught the same subject in class. So this is just an addition to our work.” But teachers admit retention power is much higher when learning through these audio-visual projects.

At the other end of the spectrum, the students, some of who had never seen a computer before, are making the most of the opportunity.

For children like Maria, who lives in an orphanage-cum-school, St Catherine’s, the Internet is the only exposure to the world outside. "We found a lot of information on the September 11 tragedy in the US, which we would otherwise never have known," says the nine-year-old.

The Internet also keeps mischievous students out of trouble. Ask Chandra Malkan, a teacher at Mumbai’s N D Bhuta school: "One of my naughtiest students, Virag, has been trying to stay in my good books ever since we got him to help in putting together our Web site for the SOL competition. He’s even done a project in Gujarati on scientist (Ernest) Rutherford and his discovery of the light rays.” She points out another benefit of the SOL program: "Children who excel in practical knowledge of computers and the Internet rather than text-bookish knowledge are finding easy acceptance among their peers!"

Srimathi Prasad sees SOL’s vision coming true. "On my initial visit, only four or five students knew the Internet. Today 90 per cent of them can answer questions, understand and work on it. What more could we want?"

Keyboad Teachers