UP teachers learn digital skills, AI at IIT-K

Varanasi: As part of state govt initiative to empower students of govt upper primary schools with modern technology and world-class education, teachers from schools of basic education department, now trained at IIT Kanpur, will make children familiar with AI, coding, cyber security, digitisation and other computer skills. As many as 10 teachers from Varanasi recently returned after receiving training at IIT Kanpur, conducted by UP council of educational research and training, Lucknow.Chief development officer Prakhar Kumar Singh said AI coding and cyber security, along with other computer skills, had been included in curriculum for children from class 6 to 8 in primary education. Intensifying efforts to implement the curriculum practically, teachers from Varanasi returned on Tuesday after training at IIT Kanpur and would now teach children in the district's council schools. The special training by IIT Kanpur will not only enhance teachers' skills but also provide new opportunities for future of children studying in these schools. This step will prove to be a milestone in realising the goal of Digital India.The CDO said teachers were skilled at IIT Kanpur in computer-based fundamental knowledge and MS Paint, MS Excel, MS Word, HTML, Google Forms, and coding languages like block coding (Scratch) and text coding (Python) with the objective to teach effectively children the curriculum-based knowledge of classes 6, 7, and 8 using all these tools. Additionally, children can be made proficient in ICT (Information and Communication Technology)-based learning effectively through various AI tools (Gemini, Copilot, ChatGPT).He said digital literacy curriculum had been added to the science textbook, therefore, it was necessary to provide digital knowledge to science teachers and upper primary school teachers to make them proficient in computers so that they can effectively deliver all these coding programmes to children. He said the training was conducted offline for five days and 7 weeks online. After this, teachers made a two-day presentation at IIT Kanpur. Those who received training were Tuba Asim, Deepti Mishra, Supriya, Akanksha, Pragya, Varun, Varsha, Veer and V K Yadav.Govt is preparing govt schools in a high-tech and state-of-the-art manner to compete with expensive convent schools. Along with this training, high-tech infrastructure is being developed on a large scale in schools, which will include establishing mini technology labs, AI classes, high-tech learning tools and machine learning workshops.