A novel, better way to bridge digital divide

There are many students in government schools do not have access to computers and, additionally, all digital literacy and coding resources are only available in English.To bridge the digital divide and provide digital literacy skills to those children who do not have access to a computers, a city-based NGO 'Coding For All' is extending their helping hands.

In the mission to impart digital literacy skills to children in the city, who do not have access to the computer, the NGO has come up with an app 'Coding at Home' as a pilot project where a child or school teachers can scan a 'handwritten code' and app complies it. Moreover, the relevant content is in Telugu.

Speaking to The Hans India, M Omkarnath, co-founder of 'Coding For All' said "I have in teaching profession for many years and taught in some of the best schools in the city. There are many NGOs teaching Math and English but very few are there teaching digital literacy in government schools. I visited various government schools and after interacting with students I realised that they do not have any knowledge about the computers. Many do not even have computers, leave alone tech teachers. So in 2018, along with my friend Abhimanyu, I started this NGO and we have started Coding at Home application as a pilot project in government schools in 2019."

Initially, they faced two big problems. Although homes had smart phones, very few schools and homes have computers and, add to it, all resources are available in English only. So to teach computer programming to the children, they devised a way where no computer is needed. Just a smartphone is all one needs. And lo! One can learn about computer programming in the school. "We have installed this app in the government school teachers' phones. So whenever any task is given to the children, they can just write code on paper.

We solved the second problem by creating relevant content in Telugu," they said. Through the NGO they have so far impacted more than 30,000 children of Class 6 to 10 at 123 government schools and recently partnered up with Government of Telangana to work with 50 government schools. Also in parallel, we are creating content in other regional languages as well, and intend to partner up with other state governments and reach out to all government schools in the country in the next 10 years. There are 20+ volunteers helping us in this mission and also with the help of crowdfunding we are able to support the government schoolchildren."