Cisco on Thursday announced its collaboration with the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) to introduce the ICT curriculum in six select Accredited Vocational Institutes (AVIs).

These institutes would provide IT Essentials: PC hardware and networking Information Technology course to around 100 students each year as part of their offerings, the company said in a statement in Bangalore.

"The course prepares students for networking and IT related careers in the public and private sectors, as well as for higher education in engineering, computer science and related fields", it said.

The selected AVIs are located at Ambala, Bhopal, Balangir (Orissa), Delhi, Mumbai and Shillong and "several more" NIOS AVI's are envisaged, the company said.

Cisco said it has trained nine instructors from the above AVIs on IT Essentials; PC Hardware and Software at the Centre for Electronic Governance, Jaipur during January 18-23, 2010.

As part of this initiative, Cisco would provide its free web-based curriculum, online course material of the Networking Academy and 24X7 technical support to the institutes, it said.