Free laptops offer ‘DTH’ service to govt students

In addition, thousands of teachers in government institutions, who were also gained from the scheme in 2019-20, could get in touch with the students through the laptops, which have high-tech internet access options.

A statistics from the Special Programme Implementation Department, which monitors the laptop scheme, said that free laptops were distributed to more than 1.5 lakh Class 11 students studying in government and government-aided schools in 2019-20.

Similarly, about 20,000 first-year students studying in government and government-aided Polytechnic colleges have also received free laptops during the same period.

A senior official from the School Education Department also told DT Next that for the first time, more than 30,000 teachers in the State-run higher secondary schools have benefited from the scheme during the previous financial year.

“During the last three weeks, we have received several feedbacks from the students that the laptops were very useful and handy to learn online by connecting internet even through Android mobile phones,” he said, adding “the laptops also benefited the teachers to send e-learning videos and other online study materials to the students concerned “.

He pointed out that the latest laptops, which were distributed to the students and teachers, come with dual boot facility offering both “Windows 10 Pro” National Academic Edition and Linux from the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) besides providing anti-virus software.

K Sundar, a Class 11 Science stream student studying in a governmentaided school in Chromepet,

said, “still I have a Chemistry exam to be written. I have completed all the portions through online with the help of my class teacher”. Sundar claimed that his classmates were also benefited from their laptops to study online. “All the doubts, including individual questions, raised by my students, were cleared then and there, by sending e-lecture through email,” J Sivashankari, a Class 11 teacher from a government school in Pallavaram, said.

She said that her laptop was also very useful for her to do students-related duties, especially updating data in the Education Management Information System (EMIS) assigned by the government to work from home.

The Education Department official also said that arrangements were made so that students could get help from the hardware engineering companies, which were appointed for the laptop annual maintenance contract if they have any problem in getting internet connection.

M Baskar Raja, a first-year Polytechnic student in the city, who took electrical stream, pointed out that circuit diagrams and formulas were easily taught through the online materials available in the internet, which could be accessed from his laptop.