The leaking rain water entering their class room, a common feature in schools in rural India, does not deter these kids. Pushpa, Prashanti , Sivamma , Swapna, Sameena and Nagaraj with their classmates are glued to the lesson on their i-Slates as their instructor T. Srinivas teaches them how to solve some tough problems in mathematics.
These children of Mohammed Hussain Pally of Ghanpur Mandal in Jadcharla of the backward Mahbubnagar district in Andhra Pradesh hold their i-Slates with pride, brimming with confidence about their knowledge of the Web world. Located about 116 km from Hyderabad, the school tucked away between hillocks and what was once a Maoist bastion, promises to transform their lives with the new generation learning solutions , which only the most affordable of their city counterparts in corporate funded schools could dream of.
Pandha Narasimha, a farmer watches his daughter Sirisha ‘etch’ his name, take his picture on the Webcam, with unconcealed joy. Narsimha says “I don’t want her to know of my debts, let her study and she will bring me joy”, he says with a glint in his eyes.
The i-Slate has been a hit says Pingali Rajeswari, a descendant of Pingali Venkanna (who designed the National Tricolour ), and who is instrumental in bringing the project to this village. She adds ... “after all India lives in its villages , they (rural folk) only watch urban India grow”. “Let the talent bloom from rural India also”.
With the i-Slate, the school children are into Web designing and have shunned watching the television , says Srinivas . They do their homework with the i-Slate. It has a software that shows how much time they spent on a particular subject.
Watching their children, the parents are keen to buy high-end i-Slates with some Government help. The children have learnt to conserve energy by installing a small solar panel over their school building that also charges their gadgets.