50,000 of Kerala's Teachers to Get Discounts on Laptops

Teachers in Kerala will soon be able to purchase their own laptops or netbooks at heavily discounted prices, according to a report by IANS.

An IT@School initiative, this scheme will supply around 50,000 notebooks and Netbooks to the educators in “God’s own Country”. It aims to provide schools with the latest tech-enabled education along with bringing in e-governance to the state’s Education department.

Laptops for all!

“A laptop will cost Rs. 17,770 and a netbook Rs. 11,450. The discount comes to as much as 36-37 percent,” said Anwar Sadath, head of IT@School. According to him, they’ve tied up with HCL, Wipro and RP Infosystems to provide the laptops and Netbooks. HCL and RP will be the ones contracted to supply the Netbooks. He also added that the laptops purchased under this scheme will carry a 3-year warranty instead of the standard one year and that the extended warranty will even include the power charger and the battery.

There’s a catch though (there’s always one, isn’t there?), if you can even call it a catch. The teachers who wish to partake in this scheme, according to The Hindu, need to have completed their training in IT and must receive backing from their head of the institute that they do indeed use IT during their classes. Untrained teachers can also apply for this scheme though, under the condition that they complete their IT training before June 2011.

Hey, that’s not too bad! It’s education all around and teachers aren’t exempt from it either because, as the old adage goes, you learn something new everyday.