[Fsf Education] More on IT@School in Kerala

[Mahesh T Pai]

Well, today, I met a teacher at one of the local schools in Kerala.

He was 'recruited' by one of the PTAs (parent teacher association)* of a 
Pvt managed, aided schools at Cherthala as an instructor for IT@School, 
8th Std.  The school also has IT at plus two level. 600 Kids at the 8th, 
+ the two plus two batches, on 11 systems, out of which 1 is 'dead'. The 
systems are purchased from an Indian brand, which has a flower as a logo 
(no prizes for guessing) with apparently fully legal s/w, with s/w 
maintenance by them. To verify his claim, I asked for expense details. 
The reply was this is a 'secret' between the vendors and the school 
management and PTA officials.

The dead system can be easily brought back to life, but the guys who 
take the decisions need to purchase new ones, so that their 'incomes' 
improve.  I guess that this is one resistance point we did not 
anticipate while pushing the TCO part as a plus factor for chosing free 
s/w in schools.  Some managements, prefer that tco remains *higher*.

I also saw the malayalam text book.  It seems that the management has 
issued strict instructions to keep the book under wraps, coz. it is not 
available for the kids.  Hoooo!!!.

It seems that children of kuchelas co - exist with gulf expats in this 
school.  Some have systems with win XP at home.  Our teacher is having a 
harrowing time explaining why some systems do not have icons on the 
desktop.  The text book mentions that 'notepad' can be opened by 
clicking on the notepad icon on the desktop!!!!  (this is not put by 
default in Win 9X, and Win XP does not have icons on desktop by default.

It appears that changing fonts in notepad forms part of the 
curriculum!!! and this is most difficult part for the kids.   lol.

I will be interacting more with this guy in the future, and will keep 
you posted.

Regards,
Mahesh T. Pai.