We met again with the teachers from the boys’ high school to flesh out more details of their plan to introduce computer literacy education to their students. They want to begin teaching the 10th and 12th grades when the new school year starts in April, because the 9th grade takes at least a month to settle into school and the 11th grade spends that much time picking their classes after passing their national board exams at the end of 10th grade. The problem with this plan, which occurred to us later, is that the students in the 10th and 12th grades will be so preoccupied with studying for their boards that they might not be too enthusiastic about taking time off to do something unrelated.

There are only ten computers, so the general consensus seems to be that the development of a small pilot project with three groups of ten students each would be best. The teachers are in favor of teaching all three groups at the same time, giving each two days a week. They’re also thinking about swapping out the students in the groups after three months. We still have to define what the students should know to be considered computer literate.

They can either dedicate 1-2 weeks at the beginning of the program to teaching typing skills in Hindi and English or spend a few minutes at the beginning of each period working on typing.

The ideal would be to have a dedicated teacher to teach computers as a separate subject, but there might not be room in the school’s budget for an additional faculty position until the government mandates a computer curriculum. The teachers are therefore considering taking five minutes out of each period to produce a 30-minute-long seventh period. The problem with this plan, which again occurred to us later, is that if a government inspector comes by, he may question why the students are losing a whole half-hour of school time since computer classes are not yet sanctioned by the government.

The teachers also want to ask the principal to hire a part-time IT person to maintain the computers. Whether or not there will be room in the budget for this additional expense remains to be seen.

The other issue, which we’re mostly ignoring right now, is that the teachers we’re working with are mostly ad hoc guest faculty who are given school postings for 10 months at a time. It’s possible (and really, more than likely) that they won’t be here after April.