NComputing co-chairman Will Poole (centre) with other officials at the launch of the computer literacy drive in Patna. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, July 28: The state has taken the next step forward to boost computer literacy.

As part of a study programme, the government has decided to provide desktop computers to 600 government schools.

Through this programme, the government, for the first time, aims to build 600 laboratories across Bihar to make computer access and education available to schoolchildren.

NComputing, a software company, has been selected to provide computer access to the schools across Bihar. The officials of the human resource development (HRD) department also recently signed an agreement with EDUCOMP to make the initiative a success. EDUCOMP has been assigned to develop computer labs in the schools. The laboratories will have 12 computers, a printer, a scanner and internet access. The project is an effort to make the students of classes VIII to XII computer-literate.

According to the government plan, students would initially be given the basic knowledge of computers and later made acquainted with other programmes.

The state government has already started the process of recruitment for computer teachers. Each computer teacher would have to train at least five other school teachers in due course.

Will Poole, the Ncomputing co-chairman, was in the city recently. He said: “In a state like Bihar, where almost 60 per cent of the population is under the age of 25, much of its future lies in the next generation of educated and computer-literate students.”

Poole further said today’s computers are so powerful that a vast majority of users utilise only a small fraction of the computer’s capacity.

Ncomputing’s desktop virtualization solution taps this unused capacity so that it can be simultaneously used by students. For this, a student has to connect their monitor, keyboard and mouse to an NComputing device, which is then connected to the shared computer.

Manish Sharma, the vice-president of NComputing, said: “A key purchasing requirement of the state government was to have the maximum number of computer seats at an affordable cost.”