To equip the youth with AI skillsets and to prepare them for AI readiness, the National e-Governance Division, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India and Intel India together have designed a National Program for Government schools. Termed as Responsible AI for Youth, the programme is now helping many government teachers and students of Tamil Nadu immensely. As part of the programme, two months ago, the Tamil Nadu school education department invited nominations from teachers.

“This program aims to empower youth to make them AI-ready’, says S Kannappan, Director of school education, Government of Tamil Nadu. “The training helps the students to get meaningful insights on AI’s social impact solutions,” he added.  

Teachers who have enrolled through the website in the first phase of the programme underwent orientation on the basics of AI and its uses. The program is designed to provide the students to become part of the skilled workforce inclusively. The AI trained teachers then enrolled the students.

The Program

Launched on 30 May 2020 in New Delhi by Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Law and Justice and Communications, the program aims to educate students from class 8-12 across all government schools in district headquarters. The program aims to provide equal opportunity to all Indian youths in urban, rural and remote corners of India. It focuses on making them human-centric AI designers who can build solutions that will have a long-lasting social impact in India.

The program is designed in three phases. In the initial stage, states will select ten teachers and 20-25 students. Teachers can enrol through self-nomination or can be nominated by the state education departments. They will be trained using 33 online training modules for more than 176 hours. During the training, both theory and practical lessons on AI will be imparted. There will be online challenges for students  

In Tamil Nadu Schools

“In the first session more than 35 teachers have attended the sessions from more than 16 districts of the state and each teacher has enrolled a minimum of 25 students,” says Dhilip S, a teacher with the Government Higher Secondary School, Sathyamangalam, Villupuram district, Tamil Nadu who also works as a coordinator for the programme. “We have created a WhatsApp group and oriented students on how to attend the class. We are delivering lectures through YouTube live and marking attendance too,” he added.

 Basic programming skills are included in the programme and students can interact through chats. “AI is the fifth generation technology in computer science. We learned what AI is and how AI can be a problem solver through the programme. We also came up with ideas to solve a problem that we see in our everyday lives through AI,” says Vishwa, a class 8th student who attended the programme. “We also help the students to think about AI critically,” says Dhilip.

After the orientation, the students will submit their projects and there will be a state level and national level selection. In the national level, the top 100 best projects will be selected. The selected students will attend the residential boot camps and will begin their deep dive AI journey through dedicated sessions. In the third phase, 50 ideas will be shortlisted and students will showcase their projects. Of this, 20 innovative projects will be declared as winners.

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