It costs about Rs 5 lakh to set up the KioskNet kit, including the internet connectivity. The village youth club will take on the monthly expenses of Rs 20,000, which includes salaries for the resource persons manning the kiosks. With paddy fields and grazing cattle as a backdrop, two computer kiosks have been set up in two ends of the village. “We will train some resource persons, such as graduates in the village, to teach the children and adults,’’ said Sreenath Ramki, a student volunteer. A small group of students of IIT-Madras, activists who are part of the India Village Liberation (IViL) movement and Prof S Keshav, who heads the department of computer science, University of Waterloo, Canada, are behind this initiative.
“We wanted to showcase an integrated knowledge centre in a hamlet that would be affordable for all. Natham will be a model for India,” said Kris Dev, ICT and e-governance consultant, who won the Manthan award in 2006 for biometric tracking under the category ‘e-inclusion and livelihood creation’. Programmes would be devised to show video demonstrations of science experiments. “The aim is to make the school syllabus more exciting and interactive for children,” said Praveen Kumar, another volunteer.
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): Jaya Menon
Quelle/Source: The Times of India, 26.10.2008
