Microsoft's first IT academy launched in Rajasthan

Jaipur, Mar 3: Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia today (Mar 3, 2006) said the state aims to put education in the highest orbit.

While inaugurating Microsoft's first IT Academy in the state and welcoming the Microsoft team, she said, ''We have understood that we need to convert our human resources to useful individuals to make it a frontline state. Education is in our very thought process. That is why training of teachers is most important in our state.'' Microsoft's IT Academy is an example of private-public partnership scheme and is part of the Rajasthan Education Initiative (REI) of the state government. The academy will impart IT training to over 8,000 teachers across the state, having already trained over 400 teachers.

Microsoft has also started teacher training at five DIET centres in Sikar, Sirohi, Sri Ganganagar, Bhilwara and Jhalawar districts.

Microsoft signed the MoU with the goverment in this regard in August last year. Under the MoU over the next five years, Microsoft aims to accelerate IT education amongst 400,000 students across 3,000 government schools in the state.

Education minister Ghyanshyam Tiwari, Minister of State for Education Vasudev Devnani, Peter Moore, managing director-public sector, Microsoft Asia Pacific and Rohit Kumar, country head-public sector, Microsoft, were also present on the occasion.

Peter Moore said the project in Rajasthan is PIL (Partners in Learning) project, which essentially has a two-pronged strategy.

Firstly to increase students' access to IT and secondly, towards capacity building that is training of teachers.

He added that it is aimed to transform the traditional classroom environment and make it more interactive.

The Jaipur IT Academy has world class facility equipped with a state-of-art IT lab complete with latest hardware and software curriculum.

The curriculum in Rajasthan is available in both Hindi and English.

UNI