50 teachers honoured

School Education Minister Thangam Thennarasu interacts with students who presented their projects at the award ceremony organised in Chennai on Monday.Over 50 teachers from schools in Tamil Nadu were honoured at a programme jointly organised by Intel India and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) wing of the State Education Department here on Monday.The teachers were winners of the State level competition on `Best use of technology in education' organised by the SSA wing and Intel India recently. Nearly 800 teachers across 30 districts submitted their entries and a few were short-listed for the State level contest, from which winners were selected.

Prizewinner P. Magdalene Premalatha, for instance, chose to address the issue of child labour.The English teacher from Panchayat Union Middle School in Tiruvarur identified 12 children who were employed and admitted them to schools.Intel, through its `Intel Teach' programme has so far trained about 19,000 teachers in the State, to impart technology-aided education to students. Speaking at the function, Minister for School Education Thangam Thennarasu said: "We are seeing a revolution in the teaching profession. Computer-aided teaching and learning are becoming popular."

Anticipating this trend, Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi had directed the department to set up computer labs in Higher Secondary schools in his previous tenure. The department was taking the idea further through the implementation of a Rs.100-crore project to achieve higher computer literacy, he added.Commending Intel for reaching out to remote corners of the State, the Minister said, "Intel's ad campaign reads Intel Inside... now, it's Intel outside and Intel leaping ahead!"

As part of their `Intel Teach' programme, over seven lakh teachers have so far been trained in India and the company aimed to reach the ten-lakh mark in a year, Intel's Corporate Affairs Director Rahul Bedi said. "Our focus is on increasing awareness about technology and equipping teachers to impart 21st century skills to students," he said.School Education Secretary M. Kutralingam said the increase in demand for the computer science stream among school students was indicative of the changing trends. SSA's State Project Director M.P. Vijayakumar said though there were sufficient resources, the department needed to work with non-governmental organisations to achieve better results."The government and NGOs need to supplement and complement each other," he added.