Besides the number of children currently taking lessons from Computer Shiksha there have been many more who have taken a few lessons but were unable to complete the course.Besides children there have been a few enthusiastic senior citizens who have also taken lessons.
Children in Nai Kiran Universal School in Ardee City, Sector 52, Gurgaon are mostly children of migrant labour. The school used to struggle in convincing the parents to send their children to school. Many would prefer their children to beg or engage in some other work where they could earn some money rather than study.
To join the school, the biggest attraction for the children and their parents used to be the free mid day meal. After Computer Shiskha started its Computer Literacy classes, some interesting trends became obvious.
More parents started approaching the Nai Kiran School for admissions and when they were queried, what brought them to this school; the answer mostly was that they had heard that Nai Kiran had started Computer Classes and they wanted their children to learn Computers.
The second trend too was quite interesting. We used to do computer classes at this school twice a week. Over time, it became apparent that there will be higher attendance on those 2 days compared to other days of the week. It was simply because children did not want to miss the Computer Classes. Later, when we expanded our Computer Literacy program to other schools, it became the usual observation in other schools too.
Computer Shiksha has now taken kids from Class XI and XII into its fold at Government Senior Secondary School, Chakkarpur Village. The course structure has been modified to make it accelerated so that the students are able to complete all lessons by the time they are ready to leave school. With it becoming almost mandatory to have some preliminary knowledge of using IT equipment to be eligible for applying to many jobs we are hopeful that those students who would want to take up employment after Class XII will find it easier to do so.