NIIT@School launched

BANGALORE: NIIT Ltd. has launched a new program called NIIT@School, which is aimed at schools on a contractual basis for a period of 3-5 years, with no initial investment from the school. NIIT will provide unlimited user license for over 200 hours of interactive multimedia software, hardware, trained faculty and `Learn with Computers' books to all the students. As part of the program, teachers are also trained to use computers as a tool to teach their respective subjects.

All students who participate in this program will be given a certificate by NIIT. The average cost of the program ranges from Rs 30 to Rs 75 per student per month. The exact fee depends on the number of students to be covered, duration of the contract and hardware requirements of specific schools. The hardware deployed by NIIT in schools will become the property of the schools on completion of the program.

NIIT also plans to create solutions to enable students to carry out pre-determined assignments and projects through access to the Web. These assignments will be class specific and each will be able to carry at least one project per month. The question bank can be downloaded from the web. Abhinav Dhar, head, LEDA Business group, NIIT Ltd, said, "NIIT@school is a new initiative from NIIT addressing class 12 segments. In India, around 50,000 schools will come under high school category. We are targeting to cover at least 5000 schools in next 3-4 years."

According to Dhar, NIIT, which has been working with schools for eight years on this program, has invested around Rs 10 crore only for content creation. Currently, NIIT has prepared contents for Physics and Chemistry. In next few months, it plans to cover Mathematics, Geography and Biology. The contents will cover the general topics on the subjects. NIIT is also speaking to some of the state government schools in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala for this program.