Internet Safari - Awareness Program

Internet Safari is an awareness project jointly conducted by the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and the International School of Information Management (ISiM), University of Mysore. The project aims to spread awareness about the internet and its usage among the faculty and students of Government schools, particularly those wherein the penetration of the internet is least. The objective of the project is to introduce the children to the internet technology and its tools and thus enable them to harness the unlimited possibilities beyond.

The project started with compiling a courseware that could be taught to the primary school children. I was decided to develop a courseware from scratch and present it using multimedia technology replete with animations. After a lot of effort the courseware was ready and a plan to implement the project was drawn. A total of 17 students of ISiM volunteered to teach the children.

The first leg of the project was scheduled on 12-13 April 2010 at the International School of Information Management (ISiM). The students were drawn from four schools.

1. Government School, Vontikoppal, Mysore

2. SaiBaba School, Jayalakshmipuram, Mysore

3. Mathrumandali School, Near Kalidasa Road, Mysore

4. Lalitha Convent, Vontikoppal, Mysore

The classroom was decorated with plants so as to lend a lively ambience to the proceedings. The schedule for each day was divided into 3 sessions. Two theory sessions of 45 mins each were held in the morning with a break in between. The afternoon session included 3 hours of hands-on practice that included real time Internet usage.

The program began with the lighting of the lamp by 4 children, each representing a school that participated in the event. Mr. Ashish Ray gave an introduction to internet technologies and a brief insight into the curriculum of the course. Mr. Chidananda K and Ms. Bhagyalakshmi then taught the students about the basics of internet technologies like, Connecting to the Web, Browsers, Forms, Searching, Email, E-Governance & Online Communities. Each topic was elaboraly explained with powerpoint presentations. Other relate topics like ISP, Basic components required to connect to the internet, how to choose internet connection etc were also covered.

Ms. Sukrita also presented the topic of GMAIL as an example of email account. Ms. Kavitha complimented her effort with teaching the basic of internet messaging using yahoo messenger as an example. Ms. Samatha then, covered the topics of social networks specially dedicated for kids. Ms. Bhagyalakshmi covered the topics concerning video hosting on internet using Youtube as an example.

The participating students were provided with lunch on both the days. They were also given ice creams during the session breaks.

A group of 17 volunteers handled the program effectively by dividing themselves into various sub-groups to delegate the responsibilities. The ‘Training group’ was responsible for tutoring. The ‘Target group’ identified set of schools and co-ordinated with them to get the students to attend the program. The ‘Management group’ coordinated with the other teams to arrange the logistics and handle the overall supervision of the activities.

The team comprised of,

Ashish Ray	Kavita	Neeranjan
Chidananda K	Samatha	Ram Prabhakaran
Gagan	Soumya	Phani
Bhagyalakshmi	Sukritha	Sunil Kumar B A
Dun YunQuing	Rajalakshmi	Akshaey
Wu Lijuan	Vamshi

On completion of the course (theory and practical sessions), an Online Quiz was organized. The quiz comprised of 50 objective type questions for a total 100 marks. Of all the students who took up the test, best 5 performers were selected for a prize.

The five winners were,

Varsha Urs C	Keerthi Kumar	Pragyna
Meghana	Pramashree

Feedback forms were circulated among the participants. The filled up forms were collected from them to know their opinion about the course and the way it was handled. Prof. Shalini R. Urs, Executive Director, ISiM presented the prizes to the five winners of the quiz. She also handed over the participation certificates and the courseware (interactive multimedia disk) to each of the participant. She invited couple of participants to speak about their opinion of the event. In the end, all the participants and the coordinators of the event posed for a group photograph.  

 

Other pictures taken during the event

To know more about the event/project, write to office@isim.ac.in