Praveen Arimbrathodiyil blogs here

FSF and KSTA District level Planning meet for IT@School project support group formation

15th May 2005
KSTA Mandiram Koppam, Palakkad

I got a chance to talk on free software at Palakkad district meet of FSF and KSTA [I attended a similar meeting in Calicut where Arun M of FSF India talked]. This was arranged by Mohandas master [A master Trainer for IT@School project in the district]. The meet started at 2.00 pm with inauguration by Shri. A. K. Chandran, KSTA state secretary. He briefed the efforts of KSTA in the Kerala School educqtion sector and especially its commitment to support use of Free Software in schools of the state as part of the IT@School project. He also talked about KSTA’s intention to prepare educational materials with FSF India. Then I got my chance to talk after Shri. Venu of the KSTA district executive briefed about the agenda of the meet. This was my first chance to talk on Free Software to an audience. Except a teacher sleeping in the class [Teachers also do sleep in the class!!] it was OK, but it took away a bit of my enthusiasm. Some teachers were very enthusiastic and asked questions in between. I think my talk went on about half to an hour. Then Mohandas sir talked about his experience of a 10 day training session at Model Engg Ernakulam and demonstrated EduMorphix � a distribution developed for the use in IT@School project by the state IT mission in association with Arun and Vimal of FSF India. He demonstrated some of the cool educational utilities included in the distro. Mr. Geo a geometric tool, gperiodic � a periodic table, Kalzium � an advanced periodic table with time line ie, you can see the elements discovered up to any year from 1600 AD[ As you move the time line each new additions comes into view];ability to show the physical states of each element as we change the temperature; arranging the elements according to acidic character or according to groups/blocks etc., a graph plotting utility � give any f(x) it gives its plot and many other such wonderful utilities.

After that we had a very live discussion about IT education and education in general in the state. We discussed the inability of the exam software to evaluate the students. [For a 2 and half mark question one get half mark for opening the word processor and another half for closing it and again a half if you open it again. It was not at all scientific and was prepared by a private company]. Some of the topics discussed were, the relative importance of theory and practicals, the role of IT as a tool for enhancing teaching of other subjects, more role for teacher in the practical exam etc. The session was over by 5pm.

[I got a sad news that my grandma (mother's mother) had passed away and they could not reach me when I went to my aunt in the evening. I left for Mannarmala then itself but the funeral was over by then]