1. Hyundai Steel Sangamam (Govt School Project)1

2. About Asha Chennai
Asha ( was founded in 1991 with the goal of working for basic education for the under privileged in India.
Since then Asha has grown to more than 60 chapters worldwide including several in India.
Asha chapter in Chennai ( took root in 2002.
Asha is a secular, democratic, volunteer based NGO. We keep administrative expenses to a minimum and use only volunteer donations to take care of our administrative expenses. 2

3. Asha Chennai Projects
We provide scholarships for 140 Underprivileged students. In addition to meeting the costs of their education, we also mentor them and provide them career guidance.
We are working with 20+ government schools since 2003 to improve the quality of education provided at these places. Primary schools and Balwadis provide the foundation for the rest of the schooling that the children go through.
We identify schools that have low teacher-student ratio and provide teachers to these schools.
Provide learning and teaching materials. Government allocates very little money towards basic materials like chart paper or chalk piece. We provide these materials. We also give teaching aids.
Maintain the infrastructure so that it can be used effectively. Government often provides budget for buildings but little funding for maintaining them. Some additional money helps in making these effective.
We provide training to Asha teachers on good teaching methodologies. 3

4. Technology and Education
Asha has typically played a supporting role to the government teachers at the school.
Asha developed contents for Tamil Medium state board syllabus for classes 3 to 10 back in 2005 under the project ECTAL.
Asha through Inautix donated 60 used computers to the supported schools in It has since then maintained computer labs in these schools. Govt. of Tamilnadu has also been giving computers to many of the schools. The schools we support have an average of 3 working computers. That is about 1 computer every 20 or 30 children.
Asha appointed one computer teacher (with PGDCA) to go to some of our schools since 2008 to teach the children about the basics of computer science.Directly impact the actual classroom process. Effectively use technology to assist the impact. 4

5. Technology and Education
Asha has typically played a supporting role to the government teachers at the school.
Asha developed contents for Tamil Medium state board syllabus for classes 3 to 10 back in 2005 under the project ECTAL.
Asha through Inautix donated 60 used computers to the supported schools in It has since then maintained computer labs in these schools. Govt. of Tamilnadu has also been giving computers to many of the schools. The schools we support have an average of 3 working computers. That is about 1 computer every 20 or 30 children.
Asha appointed one computer teacher (with PGDCA) to go to some of our schools since 2008 to teach the children about the basics of computer science.Directly impact the actual classroom process. Effectively use technology to assist the impact. 5

6. Technology and Education (contd)
Improve all aspects of the education process – Training, Delivery of Lessons and revision, Assessments etc.
Maintain the computer labs at the schools.
Provide teachers with laptops and an internet connection. Train the teachers to be able to effectively use these to improve themselves and their teaching skills.
Provide contents for curriculum subjects that are mapped to the lessons and train the teachers to use them in the classroom.
Align the materials they have in the classrooms with the training/instructions provided to the teachers. 6

7. Existing Classroom Processes7

8. Improving Classroom Processes8

9. Hyundai Steel Schools
Hyundai Steel is keen to start the work with 6 of the schools in trying to improve the education standards. The schools are,
PUPS Sengadu PUMS Ayakolathur
PUMS Thodukadul ADWPS Srirampalayam
PUPS BhaktavatchalamNagar PUMS Valasai Vettikadu
A partnership between Hyundai Steel and Asha can bring the efforts being made by Asha towards in improving educational quality to these schools as well.
Focus will be in appointing teachers at these schools who can teach both the curriculum and computers
Improve facilities and introduce computer based education at all the schools. 9

10. Proposal Support the following PUPS/ADWPS
Sengadu
Bhaktavatchalam Nagar
Srirampalayam
Support the following PUMS Schools
Thodukadu
Valasai Vettikadu
Ayakolathur
Provide materials for the schools.
Stationery and other Educational materials.
Mats and Water drums.
Sports materials (for the children to play with)
Appoint 2 computer teachers and 1 regular teacher to use computers to teach Mathematics and English using software provided by Asha to elementary school students. Teachers will visit the each school 1 day a week for primary schools and 2 days a week for the high school. 10

11. Proposal (continued)
Computer teacher will also teach computer literacy to elementary school students – topics include word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and other basic software skills
Computer teacher will teach computer literacy to high school students – topics include basic computer usage and a programming language.
Provide laptops and internet connections to the teachers. Train them to use the computers and the contents effectively in the classrooms.
Give training to the teachers to employ good pedagogical methods in their teaching.
Continue supporting the projects through the content, software and process improvements through the Sangamam Kanini project.
Maintain the computer labs in schools that have them.
Coordinate the execution of the project. Monitor the performance of the teachers including the computer teacher. Maintain good relations with the school and the village. 11

12. 2017-18 Budget Details Budget Item
Teacher Salaries 2 Computer Teachers.
198,000
Salary per teacher – Rs 8000 incl. conveyance (limit Rs 1000) per month. Deepavali bonus Rs 3000.
Teacher Salary 1 Regular Teacher
83,400
Salary per teacher – Rs 6700 incl. Conveyance (limit Rs 1000) per month Deepavali bonus Rs 3000.
Partial Assistant Coordinator Salary + Bike maintenance
80,000
Rs 3000 per month + Rs 3000 Deepavali bonus. Rs 5000 for bike maintenance. Will report to and share work with Mr. Srinivasan Project Sangamam coordinator.
Educational and Sports materials
72,000
Stationaries, educational kits, slates, pens, pencils etc.
Skipping rope, plastic balls, footballs, board games etc. 12

13. 2017-18 Budget Details (cont)
Budget Item
Budget
Details
Black board and scribble area repainting.
Rs 30,000
Will vary with size of school. This will be done twice in a year.
Drinking water drums with ladle.
Rs 15,300
Rs 1700 per set. Bigger schools – 2 sets. Smaller schools – 1 set.
School day and other functions
Rs 40,000
This will only be used towards prizes and snack items for children.
Laptop and Wifi hotspot for teachers
Rs 90,000
Rs per set. The hotspot will be used by the teacher for internet connection and can also be used by the computers in the school for internet access when our teacher is there. 13

14. 2017-18 Budget Details (cont)
Budget Item
Budget
Details
Data plan for the teachers.
Rs 18,000
Rs 500 per month (for 4GB data) for 2 teachers for 12 months.
Maintenance of computer labs
Rs 60,000
Rs 5000 per month for hardware repairs, system/network administration.
Support for Sangamam Kanini Project
Rs 240,000
Rs per month for loaded costs (Office Rent, Salary, Other Costs) for one Content Developer.
Teacher Kits
Rs 6,000
Rs 2000 per teacher for saree, blouse etc. as part of teacher kits.
Contingency fund, Admin Expenses, office rent, Misc
Rs 47,300
Rs 1000 per month for office rent (part of the Thiruvallur office). Rs 10,000 Admin expense and for contingency.
TOTAL Rs 14

15. T&E – Plan – Infrastructure
Given the existing set of computers and the government continuing to give computers to these schools, we do not expect the schools to need a whole lot of additional computers from Asha.
Provide a laptop to each Asha teacher equipped with a 3G-Wifi Hotspot. Provide a Wifi dongle to each computer in the school so that all computers can access the Internet through our Asha teacher’s laptop. Ensure that the Internet will work at all our schools and teachers’ homes.
Make a printer and copier available for our teachers and the school as a whole.
Look into providing a digital projector at each school. Equip one computer with good speakers etc. to be able to present a lesson on the computer to a class. 15

16. T&E Plan – Teacher Training
Asha teachers are being trained to improve their knowledge as well as use better teaching methodology. The training is provided for the lessons they will be teaching in the current term and the context information on how this can be used in a classroom is always provided and so is all the related materials which would be needed in the classroom.
Teachers are being trained in Mathematics on a regular basis by Asha volunteers
Teachers have an ongoing digital training class with exercises and assigned volunteers for each teacher in English
Asha teachers are trained on using computers and Internet. Primary goal is for them to be able to search, understand and manipulate (to their need) knowledge they find on Internet on diverse subjects. 16

17. T&E – Plan – Software
Provide a QR code for every lesson in every subject for every class. Provide stickers with these QR codes for the teachers and students to stick in their text books.
Every computer will run a software that recognizes these QR codes and shows content appropriate to the lesson. The content provided by the software will also be browse-able without the QR code scanning.
The application will not require network connection. It will download contents from the server as required. Where the contents are only in the form of a URL and cannot be downloaded, such contents alone will not be available offline.
Usage data will be captured by this application and uploaded to the server. This will help us monitor how the application is being used in the classroom.
Any volunteer will be able to map new contents at our server. Administrator would be able to choose and make available the content package to the schools.
Teachers will be provided an interface to enter assessment marks. There will be several interface provided to view analysed information from this data. 17

18. T&E – Plan – Contents
Focus is initially going to be on English and Maths contents.
In English we will make available a recording of every lesson read out in good English diction. Where these are translatable to Tamil a full translation will also be made available.
To remove emphasis from the textbook lessons, reading comprehension passages / worksheets will be made available for similar complexity as the lesson.
Phonics for the basic 40 odd English sounds will be made available along with the introduction to these in 1st and 2nd standards. Instructions for using these will also be made available.
Basic lesson plan will be made available for both Maths and English. In particular Math lesson plans will reference materials that would be made available in the classrooms. The focus of these lesson plans will be to just emphasis the points that are often missed in the class by teachers and not be elaborate. 18

19. T&E – Plan – Contents
Resources like Khan academy videos (which are available in Tamil), MathIsFun.com, NLVM (National Library of Virtual Manipulatives), One Stop English etc. will be mapped to the lessons of Tamilnadu state board text books and be made available.
Contents that are currently available at some of the government schools like Aziz Premji Foundation CDs, Toon Masti, Simply English will also be mapped to the lessons in the textbooks and be made available packaged along with our application.
The software will support any contents. Therefore as we feel the need we will be able to take existing contents and map them to the lessons in the curriculum. 19

20. T&E – Plan – Assessments
Design improved Summative assessments to gradually shift away from lesson based rote learning. As the scores in these are viewed by the parents and the authorities, we cannot change this abruptly.
Existing liberal grading will for a while run in parallel with proper grading which will be entered into a database. Reports from these will be shared with our teachers and schools.
For some formative assessments, computer based assessments will be provided. This can then be made dynamic to adjust for the student’s abilities.
An annual assessment to be introduced which will not be restricted on the curriculum for a term of even the year. It will test the learning achievements of the students much like the National achievement survey done by NCERT. This will be conducted every year for all classes 1 to 5. The tests will cover all learning objectives of that class and earlier classes to provide us a map of the learning achievement of every student. By correlating it to the NCERT results, we will be able to also map the performance of the school wrt other schools in the district, state etc. 20