TCS, Gujarat Govt team up to impart digital skills in schools

IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has collaborated with the Gujarat government to train school students and teachers in new-age digital skills such as computational and design thinking.

Under this partnership, TCS’ Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program will bring the company’s flagship global initiatives — Ignite My Future and goIT — to students and teachers in Gujarat, helping build the next generation of thinkers and innovators.

The initiatives align with the National Education Policy (NEP 2020), and look to inculcate global citizenship in students, building empathy towards critical issues in society and opening their minds to become problem solvers. In addition, they will build awareness among students on STEM careers and prepare them for the upcoming digital economy.

Balaji Ganapathy, Global Head, Corporate Social Responsibility, TCS, said, “The collaboration with the Gujarat government is part of our larger vision to empower people and communities. Our flagship programs — TCS Ignite My Future and goIT will be made available to 14,486 schools across Gujarat.”

TCS said that its Ignite My Future program is an effort to empower educators around the world through a unique approach that integrates computational thinking into core subjects like math, science, literacy, social studies, and arts. The program’s objective is to develop problem-solving skills among teachers and students in a way that they can apply them to trans-disciplinary real-world problems.

This program has successfully reached close to 2 million students and over 30,400 educators around the world, with a major presence in North America, Latin America, UK, India and the Philippines. It includes volunteering opportunities such as evaluating the assignments submitted by teachers, visiting partner schools for observing, reviewing and monitoring program deployment among others.

TCS goIT is a digital social innovation program that empowers students to build innovative solutions to social problems. The program engages students to actively explore social issues in their local communities. Students are mentored to collaboratively identify a socially relevant problem that relates to UN SDGs, use design thinking to ideate on the problem, develop a wireframe and a prototype solution using one of the many tech pathways that include building a mobile app, microcontrollers, IoT, artificial intelligence, blockchain and finally pitch the solution to peers and judges. Through the program, over 10,000 employees have worked with more than 100,000 students in 38 countries globally.

“Through this teaching-learning process, we look forward to providing regional, national, and global platforms for teachers and students to showcase some of their notable efforts in their journey of computational thinking and design thinking. We are also looking to identify and build an expert team of teachers for the State Education Department to use as a resource team for the future,” Balaji Ganapathy added.