"Computer Literacy For All‟ Says IIT Madras's Annual Technical Festival Shaastra

Shaastra, technical festival of IIT Madras, organizes "Computer Literacy for All‟ at Dr P V Rao High School, Chennai. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) December 27, 2013 - Shaastra, the annual technical festival of IIT Madras, as part of its Christmas and New Year celebrations is aiming to spread computer literacy in schools in India with its event "Computer Literacy for All‟, a joint initiative of Shaastra and NSS, IIT Madras. By making use of old computers donated by residents of the Institute, not only is Shaastra helping the underprivileged, but also effecting a reduction in the amount of e-waste generated by the premier institute.

Shaastra, which will be held at IIT Madras from 4th - 7th January 2014, is well-known for being one of the biggest technical fests in Asia with footfalls of over 20,000 witnessed every year. Innovative and enthusiastic students from over 200 colleges are gearing up for the four-day event, to be held in the famous wooded campus of IIT Madras. In keeping with this year's theme of 'Breaking Boundaries', Shaastra aims to move past barriers of age and distance with new initiatives like Lunar Rover Challenge, a tie-up with Team Indus and launching student made products. Also, with illustrious speakers from various areas of science and technology lined up for Lecture Series and with events like Envisage, Pan IIT Research Expo, Research Confluence, and Symposium, Shaastra is back and bigger than ever before.

Shaastra Computer Literacy for All aims to strengthen computer infrastructure of institutions that serve the needy and hopes that the idea of donating unused computers picks up in a big way so that charitable institutions are less burdened. In its second edition, the beneficiary is Dr P V Rao High School, Chennai.

In a three pronged initiative, first old computers irrespective of the condition they were in, were collected by means of donations from institute residents. Some were working well. Of the others, whatever could be rescued from the junk, whether a hard disk drive or a RAM card or a monitor or a keyboard, were salvaged and repackaged to make new systems from these old parts. Then, these computers would be donated to Dr P V Rao High School. Finally, with the help of the IIT Madras chapter of the National Service Scheme (NSS) in association with an NGO named Deepam, students would be helped in learning how to use this powerful tool, the computer by conducting regular classes.

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