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NIIT offers computer literacy to homemakers

NIIT Limited, the IT training company, recently announced a nation-wide initiative to offer computer literacy to homemakers, government employees and working and retired professionals through short and affordable computer programmes.

T O D A Y

• The expensive guess • NIIT for homemakers • Datamatics GmbH • Maharashtra picks GIS

"The NIIT Swift India series of computer programmes will help demystify computers for categories of people who could gain substantially by embracing computers in their daily life," NIIT's founder and Managing Director Rajendra S Pawar has said.

Through these programmes for executives, homemakers, professionals and retired employees can whet their appetite for computer literacy by starting for as little as Rs 499 and eight hours at NIIT.

Having taken the first step of gaining computer literacy they could embrace computers as a productive tool in their work and home life by extending their learning to 36 hours, Pawar added.

"The decision of the government to deploy computers extensively and making India a global superpower in software by 2008 will make computers an integral part of most businesses and professions and many homes," a company statement read.

In the last three years alone, India has seen over 1.5 million additional computers being bought. Of these, every seventh computer has been bought for home applications.

"We at NIIT are proud to offer these programmes for bringing people and computers together so as to be able to build a computer literate India," said Pawar.

NIIT, which launched its Boot It television literacy series on Doordarshan in 1997, has been getting requests from mothers wanting to help their children in their computer studies at school. "We were deluged with requests from young girls wanting to learn computers should they ever want to take up a job where computer knowledge will give them an edge," he said.

A number of retired professionals wanting to learn computers to communicate with their children through email or to maintain their own accounts have been coming to NIIT. Similarly, the number of government employees wanting to improve their productivity at work through computers has been swelling.

The programmes start at Rs 499-8-hour program, will be offered in metros and smaller towns where NIIT operates.

At the end of the 36-hour Swift India programme, the learners will be able to work on a PC; use Windows utilities and create simple documents and spreadsheet with simple functions and graphs. In addition, they will be able to appreciate desktop applications and the Internet.

The courses, which has been specially created by NIIT's Instructional R&D team, has enough computer practice and uses cases and examples built around applications in which the target population falls.

The learners will get a 'student guide' that serves as the textbook; a workbook to practice exercises; a 'quick reference card' to refer to important topics and a glossary.

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