Small town schools get a taste of big world technology

EMN Dimapur, June 27 For a small group of students of a local school in Dimapur town of Nagaland, having a first-hand encounter with the world of technology outside the state must not only appear awesome, it must also plant new inspiration in them. This was exactly what happened when a group of students from a local institution, Livingstone Foundation Higher Secondary School, got an opportunity to undertake an educational tour to none other than Indian Institute of Technology of Bombay (Mumbai) in Maharashtra.The opportunity came in the form of the Ishan Vikas Programme, a pilot project of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, to “comprehensively plan and bring selected school children from the north-eastern states into close contact with the IITs and IISERs,” the school stated in a note issued to the media on Saturday, June 27. As a part of the tour, 12 students from Livingstone Foundation Higher Seconrary School were selected and sent along with two teachers as guides. Eight students from Delhi Public School of Dimapur were also members of the team that travelled to Mumbai “on special invitation” from Livingstone school, the organizers informed. The educational tour to Indian Institute of Technology of Bombay started from June 7 and went on till the 22nd. Prof. Madhu Belur from the Electrical Engineering Department of Indian Institute of Technology was the coordinator of the Ishan Vikas visit of the students from north east. During the course of the visit the students received “wholesome knowledge and information” regarding numerous aspects of technology including informatics and nanotechnology from renowned Professors and Researchers in various fields like Electrical Engineering. The main part of the tour however was the daily dose of training sessions that the students received on the various packages of spoken tutorial classes based on Linux Operating System. The sessions included packages like Inkscape, Sci Lab, Geogebra, Gchem Paint, J-Mol and Libre Office Draw. All the above packages have been developed by the Computer Science Department of IIT Bombay. During the course of the training sessions, the students were made to use the special Net Books, Vidyut which were also developed by IT Bombay. These Netbooks runs on the Linux Operating System. Apart from the Spoken Tutorial Classes, the students also attended two special seminars conducted by two eminent statesmen of IIT Bombay, Prof. Harihar Narayanan and Prof. V. Ram Gopal Rao. Both the seminars were conducted at the G. Gaikonde Lecture Hall of IIT Bombay. The first seminar was led by Prof. Harihar Narayan who is the Retired Head of Electrical Engineering Department, IIT Bombay. He gave a lecture on Career Opportunities and Counselling. In his enriching speech Prof. Narayanan encouraged the students from the North East studying outside their own states to go back with the acquired knowledge and try to develop their region instead of remaining outside. Another important seminar was the one on the importance of Nanotechnology and its relevance in our day to day life conducted by Prof. V. Ram Gopal Rao. He mainly explained about the numerous technological inventions made by IIT Bombay like the Packaged Polymer Composite Cantilever Dies, I-Sens Working Prototype and the Explosive Detector Prototype for RDX and TNT.