Computer Shiksha-Free computer literacy

Dr. Rakesh Suri is an electronics engineer from BITS, Pilani and a PhD in Business Administration from AMU with over 36 years’ experience in the global IT industry. He was the CEO of the IT division of DCM Ltd. with worldwide operations reporting to him.

He is the Founder President of Computer Shiksha which is targeting to have One Million students by March 2022. For him, this is his Life’s Mission and he devotes full time to this activity.

In 2017 year-ender, he was nominated as one of the 18 people in India to watch out for in 2018 by New Indian Express.

http://www.newindianexpress.com/magazine/2017/dec/30/18-people-to-watch-out-for-in-2018-1739210.html

He was invited to TEDx-AFMC  to share the Computer Shiksha Innovation Story.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HccpqSY9SZE&feature=youtu.be

He was Invited as a speaker to Socio-innovation summit at Los Angeles, USA in June 2019, to BITSync at SFO in Sep 2019 and  BGM2020 at Goa in Jan 2020.

Computer Shiksha offers computer literacy programs as a service to schools who are already successfully engaging with communities but do not have the resources to produce an effective Digital Literacy program.

Our project aims to combat one of the troubling features of education inequality by providing technology access and instruction for under-served children.

Computer Shiksha provides Free Computer literacy through Self-Learning Videos in schools catering to the under-served by delivering refurbished computers, training a teacher per school, providing video based course-ware, assisting in monitoring, evaluation and certification of students and assisting in life-long maintenance and other support to these schools.

At Computer Shiksha, our Mission is to build an ecosystem for providing Computer Knowledge and Training with passion and commitment; to deliver value in the form of Computer trained people, who use this skill for the betterment of their lives in every possible way.

The world faces a tremendous range of unmet needs related to education, health, food security and energy use. In India, having made considerable strides in improving access, efforts are now being made to improve the quality of education. As of the 2001 Census, there are more than 400 million school-age children who are not able to afford an adequate education. These disparities, driven by class, caste and regional disparities are one of the greatest challenges that the country will need to address in the 21st century. 

Our project aims to combat one of the troubling features of education inequality by providing technology access and instruction for under-served children. Computer Shiksha offers computer literacy programs as a service to schools who are already successfully engaging with communities but do not have the resources to produce an effective Digital Literacy program.

The organization believes that exposing children to the modern marvels of the personal computer can serve as a mechanism that will better their lives substantially. The impact ranges from attracting more children to come into the fold of formal education to a desire  to pursue further education.  

Computer Shiksha provides Free Computer literacy through Self-Learning Videos in schools catering to the under-served by delivering refurbished computers, training a teacher per school, providing video based course-ware, assisting in monitoring, evaluation and certification of students and assisting in life-long maintenance and other support to these schools.

We were absolutely clear that Computer education as an employ-ability tool is no more valid. There are no jobs of data entry anywhere in the world, and whatever may be still available, will soon vanish due to AI. Computer education is just as essential as Languages and Maths, because without this knowledge one just won’t be able to fit in the society, nor get any job in the future, because computer education like maths need to be inherently known to perform any job. So computer education shifts from an employ-ability tool to an essential skill just to survive in the society. This project will thus aim to enable students to use their knowledge of computers to better their lives.

At Computer Shiksha, we endeavour to deliver value in the form of Computer trained people, who use this skill for the betterment of their lives in every possible way. 

Simply put, the overarching desire of the Computer Shiksha team is to leave no one computer illiterate on the face of this Earth. We have made a beginning with initially targeting kids at schools that cater to the under-served communities in India and, to some extent, in Ghana, Africa. As many as 99,500+ such kids are already reaping benefits from this missionary work of Computer Shiksha.

We are currently working in 15 states of India and with support from an NGO in Ghana have trained teachers of 21 schools in Ghana where more than 500 kids are learning with the help of Computer Shiksha.

In this work on the ground, it has been reported that :

1. Whichever school started CS courses, the number of admission requests to that school increased dramatically, as word spread about computer education being available there.

2. On the days, computer literacy is provided, the attendance improves compared to the days when it is not the turn of the computer course.

3. The sheer confidence that children gain once they start computer education is awesome to watch 

The Computer Shiksha Mission is to build an ecosystem for providing Computer Knowledge with passion and commitment; to deliver value in the form of Computer trained people, who use this skill for the betterment of their lives. We aim to combat one of the troubling features of education inequality by providing technology access and instruction for under-served children.

Exposing children to the modern marvels of the personal computer can serve as a mechanism that will better their lives substantially. The impact ranges from attracting more children to come into the fold of formal education and to pursue further education.  

It was 15th March 2012 when we came together to articulate our dream of social service and got to the drawing board. Computer Shiksha is a team of professionals with a varied background, most of which lies in the domain of Management, Education and IT. For long, individually each of us has been driven by an innate desire to do something for the community but could never get down to it.

The idea was to utilize the talents that we have –  IT, Education and Management and provide Computer Education as a service to those who are already gainfully and successfully engaged with communities similar to a B2B model in business. A small meeting with a street based NGO made it look possible and very exciting too. And thus was born what we call Computer Shiksha today. And from there this idea of a N2N (akin to B2B) initiative came. Now we partner with other NGOs already running educational establishments for communities and take computer education to their doorsteps.

We intend to provide Computer Knowledge and Training from Pavements to High-rises, children to adults, villages to metros, with passion and commitment. Our dream is to ensure computer literacy for all!

We believe everybody has an innate desire to 'give-back' to the Society. We had arrived at a stage in life where our basic needs could be easily met and it was a ripe time to put into action our 'giving-back' endeavors. Looking at our combined experiences and the needs of the Nation, we narrowed down to working in education for the under-served. From here to focusing on computer literacy was an expected step since we came from the IT and ITES industries and hoped we could bank on support from our friends for say, end-of-life computers etc.

Next, a search brought us to a team as passionate as us and already teaching under-served kids under a tree ! Our first computer class was right there with a generator, a projector-screen and a few of our own computers. This led us to our first model of teaching by our own resource person at schools. Then came the scale-up need to move towards our vision of not leaving anyone in the World computer illiterate. This brought about the development of our current Model II where the teacher is the video itself. A Facilitator from the school is trained to operate the classes.

The future of computer training will be the use of digital media to instruct the user. Computer Shiksha has been quick to adopt this philosophy and has successfully transitioned all of its services from the traditional live classroom structure to the more innovative digital media format.

We created content to cover the entire curriculum in such a way that learning could happen in almost the same way as in a live class with a trainer. We have been able to build in Expected Student Responses. The instructional content is

• in the form of power point integrated video modules (with audio voice-over)
• Hardware / Software Troubleshooting manual

·         Trainer's Manual for all the modules of the course for helping the trainers in the classroom

School facilitators are trained by us to handle the Videos to impart the programmes as well as repair more than 96% of Hardware and O/S problems that occur with the help of CS helpline.

Thus our approach is to "enable".

Computer Shiksha is led by leading professionals from IT and management and who have run global organizations. Dr. Rakesh Suri, Founder President at Computer Shiksha has over 36 years’ experience in the global IT industry. For him, this is his Life’s Mission and he devotes full time to this activity. 

In our model we need to continue assessing new schools catering to the under-served to evaluate them for suitability to offer Computer Shiksha courses. With a lean and mean time at the helm, we explored possibilities of getting support from  local 'champions' for education in different geographies and ask them to point us to needy schools. This worked pretty well and the resource person could also help us with monitoring and maintenance logistics for CS enabled schools. Now, everything Computer Shiksha does is for 'giving-back' to society with no costs involved. In one of these situations the local person was also involved in an association for welfare of local teachers and CS enabled schools got confused about monetary demands being made from them. While these were for the association, Computer Shiksha had to fire-fight to retain it's branding in that area.

This episode taught us to get back to being really close and involved in local schools. We now try to ensure that these schools are visited by us in a round robin manner.

Dealing with Covid taught us to rely more on technology and we are already doing seminars on Zoom foe new school owners !

When Computer Shiksha was delivering computer literacy classes in 6 schools directly with its own resources including trainers; it was becoming clear that in this model, CS cannot expand its footprint fast and economically to reach a larger set of waiting children.

One of the major roadblocks identified was the lack of trained manpower in computer literacy to teach in schools.

At that time, a search for the new way of working was started under Dr. Suri's leadership. And, after 2 years of efforts, it culminated in development of Self Learning course videos and Help Manuals for teachers, which revolutionized the way this challenge was addressed.

With help of 8 days training at CS training center, any 12th standard pass person who may have never seen a computer in life, would become a world class computer trainer and deliver computer literacy lessons using CS course videos and help manuals.

And this breakthrough, made it possible for CS to grow at a scorching pace.

Among the video aided computer literacy programs available we have not come across one which is free or one that has almost replaced the teacher. Computer Shiksha does that ! 

Popular sites such as: YouTube, Khan Academy and Coursera, have shown the power of technology to influence the way individuals can garner new knowledge. The goal of this media technology has always been to provide the user with as personalized a product as possible; to truly simulate the presence of a teacher-pupil interaction. 

Computer Shiksha has been quick to adopt this philosophy and has transitioned all of its services from the traditional live classroom structure (model 1) to the more innovative digital media format (model 2). Our engineers have created content to cover the entire curriculum in such a way that learning could happen in almost the same way as in a live class with a trainer. This is especially because designers of the content (our engineers) have spent more than 3 years in delivering this content in person to thousands of students making them uniquely able to create an exhaustive program which addresses all potential problems and questions that will arise during the delivery of the course.