वय वर्ष ३ ते १२ मुलांचे ग्रामिण भागात दिले जाणारे संगणक शिक्षण

शिरगाव तसे एक खेडे देवगड तालुक्यातील एक छोटेसे खेडे या गावात शिरगाव हायस्कूल मधील मुलांच्या संगणाक शिकण्या बाबतचा हा लेख
हा प्रकल्प सुरू करण्यास NIIT मधिल श्री सुगाता मित्रा व श्रीमती परीमला ईनामदार याच्या प्रेरणेने हा सूरू झाला आहे.

I am Shamshuddin Nasiruddin Attar.I am working as a teacher in Shirgaon Highschool Shirgaon since 1991. I teach Mathematics to standard 8th , 9th and 10th.For the first 12 years, I was only a mathematics teacher but in 2003, NIIT opened a Kiosk under the project ‘Hole in the wall’ (For the children below 14).

I had never seen a computer till 1998 but I had an urge to learn computer. But I was not sure whether this will of mine will ever be fulfilled or not. The reason is that I live in small, remote village. There are no good roads and other facilities available here. Children walk to school from a distance of 3 to 5 kilometeres. Children coming to school are from poor families. I had never thought that I will ever be able to handle a computer in such a school in this village.

A very important thing happened in my life on 15th August 1998.An industrialist from Mumbai donated a Computer to our school. It was an old 386 computer with 540MB HDD and 16 MB RAM. Something was better than nothing. I was really happy because now I could use the computer. There was a little fear in my mind if anything goes wrong with the computer…but gradually I got over the fear.

I started using the computer and learnt some basic things like switching On and Off the computer on my own. There was no one to teach me. I was very happy. This computer had DOS and not Windows. So I bought some books on DOS. Now I was able to use some basic commands like cd, copycon, cd.., dir, dir/p, dir/s, md dir. When I first created a file named attar.doc using copycon command and showed it to my colleagues, they appreciated it. Now I had absolutely no fear about handling the computer. I was learning new things and progressing day by day. But I was feeling bad that I couldn’t let the students use the computer. By now I was able to handle the computer well enough. In the meantime my book collection also increased. I was learning computer through the books. I was still unaware of many things but I was trying to understand them. Where is computer used? How? What are its types? What are their advantages? These were some of the questions I still had to find the answers for. The concept of internet was totally new to me. I was absolutely illiterate about it. But may be because I and my students were lucky, NIIT started a Kiosk in our school. This was a golden opportunity for my students to learn many things. The students of the std. 5th to 10th used to come to the kiosk before and after the school and even on the holidays. Here the children who had never seen a computer, were actually using a computer. The kiosk centre was connected to the internet. Facility of internet connection through phone was not available in our village that’s why NIIT made us the internet available through dish. The entire universe was brought in our sight through the internet. Children had started using internet. This was an important thing according to me.
Even I was learning to use internet now. There was no one to teach me but I used to buy old books at half price and learn from them. Ordinary things like searching, sending e-mails, reading newspaper, visiting websites were extraordinary for me. By now children had learnt to use computer, to download, to chat and to mail. We (I and children) faced many problems during this process but we overcame them with each other’s help.
Children opened their own e-mail accounts, started sending mails to each other and even chatting and they taught these things to me too. They started deciphering many short-forms used while chatting like ‘als’ (a=age s=sex l=location). Children had a problem with English but they solved it by chatting to only the ones who knew Hindi. They created a group and started sending website links to each other. They used to teach all the new things learnt to their friends. This way everyone was a teacher. Many a times they used to ask me their doubts. So to clear their doubts I had to learn those things. This way I kept learning many new things and now I can use computer as well as internet very well.
Then I started using internet to overcome many problems during teaching. I started collecting information and references needed for teaching using search engines. I was trying to make my students also take up this habit and I think I was pretty successful in doing so. All the time we used to think about computer only. Parents were also proud that their child uses internet. Parents of four students who were financially well off, bought computers for them. Because of internet, children could get information about opportunities after SSC, which courses to take up, what is happening in the rest of the world. A significant progress in their academics was noticeable. A positive change in their behaviour and personality was seen. All this was possible because of the kiosk and the interest developed amongst children about internet.
But all these changes were observed only in 25% of the children though I was looking forward for a number more than 50%. To achieve this I used to arrange quizzes, project competitions, drawing competitions (making drawings on the computer and their exhibition), essay competitions etc. I was trying to create a promising atmosphere in which I got a little success also.
I was using search engines and sometimes YouTube to show things which cannot be shown in classroom to students. (e.g. Tsunami, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, adaptations of animals, reference books, maps etc.). I was using powerpoint presentations for teaching. I was downloading e-books from wikipedia to develop reading habit amongst children. I collected information and maps required for teaching geography and history using Google Earth and wikimapia. I downloaded the map of our village from wikimapia and made a big chart out it (8ft *2 ft) which is put up in our school. As I was collecting and downloading information, an information library was created. Now I have about 100 cds. The whole purpose behind all this was to make learning more joyous for children and to make my teaching more effective.
As the time passed, parents got to know about all this through their children. Parents, teachers from other schools and many people started to come and ask me their doubts. I was called to give lectures at taluka and district levels. This change in me and my students was possible because of the donated computer and ‘hole in the wall’ project by NIIT and Dr sugata Mitra,Parimala Inamdar and prasad revadekar . I was trying to bring about such positive changes in the village with the help of Dr Sugata mitra And Parimala Inamdar, our institution, school teachers, parents, children and other people from the village. The number of computers in our school gradually increased. Our school started receiving computers as donations from MLA and other donors for the computer education in our school. Now we have an advanced computer lab with 12 computers. Our committee has decided to start computer as a subject for junior college. We also run MSCIT course. Many of our students from std. 6th to 9th also have passed this course.
I feel, this is possible in every village with the efforts of teachers.
Thank you.

S.N. Attar,
Shirgaon Highschool, Shirgaon,
Tal: Deogad
Dist: Sindhdurga
PIN: 416610
Phone: (02364)236349
Mob: +91 9422 42 3492
+91 9922 41 3492
email :- sn_attar@yahoo.com
snattar1968@gmail.com