Reading, writing and arithmetic have been the basic skills taught in schools for centuries. But modern times demand that one more essential skill be added to the basics: digital literacy. Unfortunately, despite the proliferation of smartphones and cheap data, this skill remains beyond the reach of millions of underprivileged children in India.

Students of Praxis Business School, located in the southern fringes of Calcutta, have initiated attempts to bridge this gap. From conceptualisation to execution, the digital literacy programme workshops are all their doing.

So far, they have held workshops for students of two schools in the neighbourhood — Sharmali Bholanath High School and Rasapunja P.K. High School. Shruti Tewari, a second-year MBA student of marketing and human resource, is one of the volunteers who conducted the training. She says, “We cover the basics of computer application and Internet required in everyday life — such as how to create a Gmail account, how to search things in Google or how to save documents in the cloud.” They are also made aware of online safety and taught to use social media, while avoiding its misuse.

Deepanshu Naskar, a Class VIII student of Rasapunja P.K. High School, has neither a smartphone nor a PC at home but is still keen to learn. He says, “Today I learnt the positive use of Facebook and also the difference between a message sent via WhatsApp and email. I also learnt to identify fake news by crosschecking on the Internet.” But what he was most excited about was learning to calculate expenses using an Excel sheet.

Also from the same school, Sayan Biswas of Class IX says, “Although we have computers as a subject, I haven’t been able to master it.” In his school, the operating system used is Linux instead of the usual Windows and there are only 10 PCs for a class of 71. “Here, in the workshop, each one of us got to work with our own computer! And it was hands-on training with little interference,” he adds.

An unfavourable ratio of teachers to students as well as lack of infrastructure and proper training has remained a stumbling block for digital literacy of rural children, observed the student volunteers of Praxis. With little one-on-one attention, they found, schools fail to instil self-confidence in the children and hamper their zeal to learn more. Says Bedavyash Satpathy, first-year student of MBA, “Even though the children are eager and intelligent, they haven’t mastered the skills they should have in school. With a little hand-holding, they are acquiring the skills quickly.”

Many years ago, Sugata Mitra, now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University in England, had conducted a unique experiment in a New Delhi slum. Called the Hole In The Wall learning project, he installed computers with Internet connection and let children interact with these. He found that the children began to teach themselves English, computing and maths just a month after starting to use the PCs. Ever since, similar projects across the world have successfully carried out “self-activated learning” among pre-teens and teens.

Charanpreet Singh, the founder-director of Praxis Business School, sums up, “Since our institute operates at the confluence of business management and technology, we understand the importance of digital literacy in today’s world. Our programme attempts to make the less privileged digitally literate, so that they can participate meaningfully in the growth of their country.”