By OUR STAFF REPORTER
Dehradun, 1 Nov: Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RLEK) has started some schools for the marginalised community, where it is providing quality education including in computers. RLEK also has a Memorandum of Understanding with Planete Urgence. Under this association, Planete Urgence has sent Mai Hong to impart training to rural teachers in computer and internet skills that ran from 21 October to 1 November. IT expert Mai Hong from France trained more than eight participants, which included teachers of RLEK and volunteers, on useful tools of computer that will come in handy in teaching the students and even managing their attendance and scores. During the first few days of the training, she taught them the basics of Microsoft Word, and then moved on to Microsoft Excel and further to internet skills. She taught them how to create a Gmail account, how to search keywords on Google, how to save images from Google and how to use Wikipedia, etc. Lastly, she also taught them how make a Power Point Presentation. All the trainees showed a lot enthusiasm and excitement. They cleared their doubts and learned everything very fast. Prem Lal, one of the school teachers from RLEK, said, “I got the opportunity to learn so many things from this IT workshop, like how to make tables and graphs, how to insert pictures and change colours in Microsoft Word. In Microsoft Excel, I learnt addition, subtraction and so many different formulas. I learned how to use Wikipedia and save images from Google which is very helpful. I learned how to make a Gmail account and send an email and lastly I learned about Power Point Presentations.’’ On the last day of the workshop, Mai Hong shared her experience and said, “I have been surprisingly pleased with my experience at the RLEK campus: the people are welcoming and took care of me. Teaching IT skills to rural teachers is an interesting experience: even though we cannot discuss much in English, I can feel the willingness of the teachers to learn these new skills. They try hard to handle these tools they are not used to. Two weeks of training is short to make learners become familiar with computers, but I can see their progress every day. I hope that these workshops would be useful first for their teaching activities and secondly this knowledge would be beneficial to their students.” Later, certificates were awarded to the participants for successfully completing the training.
