After its success in making information and communication technology (ICT) education a part of school syllabus, the Kerala government is aiming to give a fillip to the teaching process by introducing 'IT enabled' learning modules for subjects from the coming academic year.

ICT was hitherto a subject from class five to ten. This concept has been changed with the introduction of ICT enabled education of all subjects,IT @ School Project Executive Director K Anvar Sadath told PTI.

As a first step, a new ICT textbook for Eighth standard, which adopts an innovative approach to learning and teaching ICT has been approved by the state curriculum committee.

"This would be the first textbook of this kind in the country that blends Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools in learning regular subjects, Sadath said.

The textbook has been designed in such a manner to enable students to use it as an extension to study other subjects, he said. From the new textbook, students can use the free software Sunblock to study the time zones and to find the differences in time between nations and continents.Another major change was that ICT would not now be taught by a single teacher but by teachers who handle various subjects,he added.

Altogether 12 chapters have been included in the eighth standard textbook that provides extensive scope to learn work processing, spreadsheet and presentation packages along with Python programming and Internet use.

The Textbook has been prepared in a way to make the learning process of even complicated problems easier with the use of software.'This is the first textbook where in software has been blended to learn other subjects.IT enabled learning in Kerala is all set for a revoluntary change', Sadath said.

Now that almost all schools in the state have broadband Internet connectivity and have been supplied laptop computers and multimedia projects, 'IT learning is going to be a new experience in coming years', he said.

The IT @ School project, a technology arm of the State's General Education Department, would give schools CDs containing the software mentioned in the textbooks and would also create a 'companion web site', which contains additional teaching and learning resources.

As part of the programme, all teachers handling Class eight would be given subject-specific training during May,Sadath said.

Similarly, the new textbooks for Class nine and ten would undergo drastic change in the coming years in tune with the new concept, he said.

Under the IT @ School project, 90,000 computers were made available in schools in the state since the project started in 2000. The project has achieved several milestones in implementing ICT enabled education in over 8000 schools.

The backbone of the project was its strong network of 200 Master Trainers and 5600 School IT Co-ordinators.As on date, more than One lakh teachers have been given training as part of the project initiatives, Sadath said.

'The initial years of the project was focussed more towards imparting various IT based training programems on IT and now the scope has elaborated to enable them to handle their subjects using ICT as a tool", he said.

The project has also prepared interactive multi-media CDs, Handbooks and Training modules for ICT, as well as textbooks for IT in standard five to ten.

Apart from this, IT @ School is the nodal agency for e-governance activities in General Education Department and had implemented several e-governance programmes like single window system for plus-one admission and computerisation of noon meal records, he said.