The Hindu 16.03.2013
IT training for Corporation staff
To foster the use of information technology among workers of the Coimbatore Corporation, American Indian Foundation (AIF), a non-profit organisation working across India, is organising a one-day IT workshop on April 6.
The civic body’s Education Department staff will be taking this workshop, which will be held at the Corporation High School in Maniyakaranpalayam. A hi-tech ‘Dell-connected’ Smart Classroom equipped with a touch screen digital board, projector, 25 laptops and three years of unlimited broadband connectivity was opened at the school for the purpose a few weeks ago.
V. Alexander, zonal coordinator (DE programme) of the Foundation, said that the Corporation staff would be trained on topics such as Internet, MS Excel and MS Word besides creating e-mail Ids, composing mails, viewing various education websites, uploading files and downloading attachments as they used Internet for their official communications.
Other topics include using MS Excel and word document for their circulars. Training would also be imparted in typing using Tamil fonts as all official works were carried out in Tamil language.
Summer camp
The Foundation was also organising a summer camp from the fourth week of April to May for all the 27 Corporation School students. The students would be trained in documentary film making and PBL (Project Based Learning) methods.
Social issues such as disposal of garbage, water wastage, electricity conservation, road safety and banking would be taken up and the students would make a documentary film by the end of the week.
In this camp, the AIF would take two batches with 40 students each.
The first batch of students would become the Student Master Trainers (SMT) and would receive training in handling software such as Audacity, AVC (Any Video Converter), Photo Story: 3 for Windows, Windows Movie Maker and Wondershare Video Editor.
The second batch of students would be given training in PBL Methodology.
DE Programme
These initiatives were part of the ‘Digital Equaliser’ (DE) Programme - for which the Coimbatore Corporation had inked a three-year Memorandum of Understanding with the Foundation.
As per the MoU, the subject content was provided in Tamil language through technology. It covered all the 10 high schools, 16 higher secondary schools, and one special school of the civic body, which had provided 464 computers for the project.
The workshop will be conducted on April 6.
