A FEW meters from the boundary wall of the head office of IT training institute NIIT in New Delhi, there is a slum.

While NIIT has become a household word in IT circles in more than two-dozen countries, the slum is a constant reminder that in the country that is in many ways powering the information revolution, there is a huge gap between the virtual and the real worlds.

As an experiment, NIIT's cognitive engineering researchers last year made a hole in the wall near the slum and installed a powerful computer connected permanently to the Internet there.

The computer was available for anyone to use.

The result was extraordinary. The slum children, many of whom had had no primary education, went over to check out the computer. There was no instructor on call; they were left to themselves.

Within five hours, one of them, Rajender, eight, had managed to find a Disney site. Within days, a group of children, aged five and 17, had figured out how to download Hindi‑film hits, Disney movie‑clips and cricket trivia.

Not all used the Internet. One little girl used graphics software to help her father, a tailor, figure out the design and color scheme of a skirt he was working on. Most of the children played games.

The children also developed their own language for working on the computer because there was nobody to explain the terminology to them.

They named the cursor nci sui, mtr or needle, because of its sharp arrow shape, and they call websites “channels".

The hourglass is called a nci damru, mtrthe hour‑glass shaped drum that the Hindu god Shiva plays.

When it appears, the children know the computer is working on something.

Noted Dr. Sugata Mitra, head of research at MIT: "In most of our classes here at NIIT, we spend time teaching people the terminology and such. With these children, that seems irrelevant."

MIT engineers withdrew the keyboard after it proved unable to stand the harsh use, and replaced it with a crude but sturdy joystick‑like apparatus.

To date, the slum children have created more than 1,000 folders.

 

THE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY

In the hot summer afternoons, the sun falls on the screen and the computer is kept covered and locked; in the long evenings, it is opened and the children flock to it.

Sanjay, 13, told The Straits Times that most of them played games or checked newspapers online.

Kithang, eight, peering into the screen and jiggling the joystick, remarked that the second layer of glass in front of the computer was very strong.

"If they give us a keyboard, we will be here all the time," said Sanjay. Both children were attending a nearby government school that does not have a computer.

Where is the lesson in this? Said NIIT vice‑president Suren Singh Rasaili: "The power of technology can fail against only one thing, the government."

Dr. Mitra called the experiment "minimally‑invasive education".

In the process, he realized that computer literacy could be achieved with minimal or no formal instruction; the result was a sort of functional literacy.

The implications for a country like India are significant. Wherever governments have had the political will to farm out schemes to private operators, they have usually worked, Mr. Rasaili noted in a conversation with The Straits Times.

Dreams of applying IT to India's huge educational needs are still in the formative stage. Strategists at training institutes like the NIIT and in-state governments across the country are struggling to find ways to bridge India's education gap using the new technology.

The challenge is a formidable one.

NIIT is in many ways the engine of India's IT sector. It is the largest IT training institution in the world and among the projects it is involved in is Malaysia's Smart Schools program.

Thus far, NIIT has been feeding the voracious needs of IT professionals in an environment in which one must upgrade skills or perish. NIIT has also started NetVarsity.com, a virtual university.

These services could go beyond the universe of IT professionals and students and out to India's middle class of 200‑300 million.

But what about the bulk of the population, about half of whom - especially women ‑ are illiterate?

Significantly, the women in the slum outside the NIIT wall asked rhetorically whether having the computer available would bring them any food, and said they themselves did not have the "brains" to use the computer.

But they were against the idea of pulling out the computer because the children were having so much fun.

The answer could lie in the state of Tamil Nadu, which has been making strides in IT quietly while its neighbor Andhra Pradesh generates the hype and creates the crucial role‑model in its cyber‑savvy, notebook‑toting chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.

 

MORE ACCESS TO COMPUTERS

Under a scheme farmed out to the private sector, the Tamil Nadu government gave 371 bare, 6m by 6m "classrooms" to, among others, the NIIT.

The institute renovated them, installed electrical and network cabling, air‑conditioners, uninterrupted power supply units, computers and printers, and deployed 742 teachers in the classrooms, which were spread all over the state, from big towns to small villages.

Each classroom was equipped with 10 computers and one server.

Under this scheme, a total of 3,710 computers were installed in schools in 30 days. There is no Internet connectivity, but "that's just a step away," said Mr. Rasaili.

Clearly, he added, the technology has the power to transform the face of society. But the challenge of education, especially at the primary level where it is needed most, is enormous enough to warrant cautious optimism rather than blind euphoria.

The much‑bandied about potential of distance learning has been slow to take off, not only in India, but worldwide. The academic world has had problems in the areas of authentication and certification.

The romanticized remote learning potential of the Internet ignores the reality that some contact with mentors is essential.

The role of the teacher and the classroom is not yet a thing of the past and may never be, considering the crucial importance of the element of motivation and inspiration that enliven the learning experience and make it necessary to attend a school rather than simply study an encyclopedia.

"A degree online is not truly a reality," says Mr. Sanjiv Kataria of NIIT, using the term "brick and portal" to underscore the point that the classroom will not be replaced.

“In learning, community is important," he noted.

NetVarsity.com tries to create that community with mentoring services available. So does egurucool.com.

But according to users, the latter serves best as a benchmarking site.

Students from a school in Bihar who aspire to be in one of the best schools in New Delhi, for example, can access the homework assignments and tutorials of a Delhi school and benchmark themselves.

Obtaining higher degrees through the Internet is currently something far from the minds of the children in the slum outside the MIT wall. But with every click, the dawn of that idea comes closer.

 

 

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