COMPUTER EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN

Chennaibest.com speaks to M Krishna Sai, Managing Director, The FourthR, about computer education for children.

FourthR was started in late 1997, when I got back from the US. I wanted to start a software training centre, and I found that Chennai was already mushrooming with too many of them. So we decided to start something different, which would address an altogether different category - children. I was negotiating with some US companies for them to come in and set up shop here and The FourthR Centre in the US, was near my home there. As the recall was tremendous, I finally decided to start it here in India.

What’s different is the delivery mechanism and the fact that FourthR’s syllabus is in keeping with the latest trends. What they offer in schools are very old programming techniques like Basic and Cobol, which are no longer relevant. They are basically application-driven. For example, in a word package, they will only teach you how it works, but at FourthR, we go beyond the application part. We teach them what a word processing package typically does, how the basic RDBMS structure works. So how we deliver content is the key difference. Our strength is in the way the curriculum has been designed. We believe only in hands-on knowledge. And we update regularly.

We are also into computer fundamentals for anyone, who wants to learn computers. We are not into teaching programming languages. We have short courses on how to use the MS-Office package, how to use the Internet and things like that. These are basically low-end software for a person who wants to get a feel of the computer. We also have some hardware certification courses on similar lines.

I agree it is difficult for the three-year-old. But what we have for the age three to five groups is a lot of multimedia-based software. They learn colours, alphabets and numbers using basic mouse movement. We teach them basic concepts in pattern recognition. For the beyond five years group, for instance if they have to do a project on Albert Einstein, they learn to search the net for information and then make a good presentation in the power point format. So they not only learn about Albert Einstein, they also learn to use fundamental applications. Same is the case with say currency conversion, apart from the application used, they also learn about what foreign exchange is and how it works.

Right now, we know that the fee is not affordable to the lower middle class. We make sure that at any point of time, one instructor should not handle more than three students. So as we offer personalised learning, the costs are high, and therefore unaffordable to the lower middle class. So we are planning to take our programmes to schools. We already have tie-ups with a few schools. So instead of the children coming to us, we will be going to them. The same programme that we offer here will be offered at one-tenth cost at the schools.

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