Could anyone kindly pass on links of Free Software usage in Indian schools? Tks, FN

IT practical tests on 'open' platform

Anand Parthasarathy

IT@School project of Kerala has developed an operating system based on the Linux

Akshaya had raised popular expectations

Kerala, first State to use Edusat satellite channel

— Photo: Special Arrangement

IT WORKS: Students of the Government Girls High School, Ernakulam, doing self-paced computer 'practicals.'

BANGALORE: In the largest such simultaneous deployment of 'free-and-open' software in India, over 15 lakh Kerala schoolchildren on Friday start taking their quarterly practical tests in Information Technology on personal computers using a special Linux version.

The IT@School project of the State Education Department has developed an operating system based on the Linux version Ubuntu. Called IT@School GNU Linux Version 3.0, it was distributed to 2,832 high schools — over a thousand of them government schools, the rest aided and unaided ones.

Between September 7 and 22, children of Classes 8, 9 and 10 will use some 30,000 PCs to do their quarterly practical examinations in IT.

Test skills

In Class VIII, for example, the examination will test skills in the use of the mouse; the 'Tux' paint software for drawing; word processing and spreadsheets. A trained cadre of over 70,000 teachers will help them.

The project has created a whole ecosystem of computer-aided tools for self-paced learning, online testing, instant evaluation, marks generation and so on. All this is done using royalty-free Open Source software.

For example, the Open Source picture editing tool Gimp, rather than a pricey proprietary option like Photoshop, is in use.

The State's path-breaking e-learning initiative Akshaya had raised popular expectations, but the cost of proprietary software licences in bulk was unaffordable. This led to the State emerging as a pioneer in the use of Open Source resources in a host of education and e-governance projects.

In July 2005, Kerala was the first State to use the Edusat satellite channel to connect schools in all its 14 districts under the Virtual Class Technology on Edusat for Rural Schools, or VICTERS, programme.

IT@School executive director K. Anvar Sadath, a veteran of the Akshaya programme, said on Thursday that the Central Government had underwritten almost the entire cost of the school computerisation programme to the tune of Rs. 6.2 crores, while the State had spent Rs. 75 lakh this fiscal year.

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-- Frederick Noronha Journalist http://fn.goa-india.org In Hyderabad. Ph 040-23132176 SMS: 9822122436