Communications of the ACM
Duo on a Mission to Make Computer Education More Fun
Sridhar Iyer and Rupesh Shah's Computer Masti curriculum uses animated characters to teach computer literacy to students as young as three years old.
Credit: komalvora87.wordpress.com
Rupesh Shah has teamed up with Sridhar Iyer, a professor of computer science at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, to make computer learning fun, interactive and rote-free.
They founded InOpen Technologies in October 2009 to address a gap in computer learning. "I noticed that everybody just wanted to learn computer application through skill and not through concept. This serious lack of basic understanding made me think about giving computer learning an early start," says Shah. Their first computer-learning curriculum, Computer Masti, was designed for children aged 3-18 years.
The content-based curriculum teaches computer literacy skills through three animated characters, and the lessons are tucked inside character dialogues. The curriculum can be tweaked according to individual learning patterns with textbooks, e-books, software, CDs and the like.
Today, Computer Masti has been incorporated into 78 schools and reaches 250,000 students across India and in a few government projects. InOpen hopes to break even in the next two years.
From The Economic Times
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