Microsoft and the Government of Maharashtra today announced signing a MoU to drive uptake of ICT in schools as well as build employability readiness skills in the state particularly among the class 11 and 12 students. The two parties already share a agreement towards setting up of three Academies by Microsoft India which has till date trained over 92,000 teachers who in turn have imparted training to 46,00,000 students.

Commenting on the agreement, Hon’ble Minister for Education, Government of Maharashtra, Shri Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil said, “In a globalised world, it is important for Indian youth to be familiar with the same tools and technologies that their peers around the world use. IT education and access to the latest IT tools and software will go a long way towards giving them a competitive advantage. We look forward to Microsoft’s expertise in this area.”

The new deal will see Microsoft imparting training to 6,000 teachers as well as 100,000 pre-service teachers.  In addition, Microsoft will also help to build last mile capacity among educators. One educator from each cluster will now be required to undergo a 10 day training module in a classroom set-up with Microsoft conducting over 200 sessions at the District level over the next two years.

Microsoft will help deploy the Microsoft Digital Literacy curriculum (DLC), a self learning multimedia based module which introduces the fundamentals of computing to a first time user.

Furthermore, the MoU will also result in the software giant providing a single login through Microsoft’s Live@Edu  initiative, which will enable all students and teachers across the approximately 85,000 schools in the state to acquire email with school-specific domains. Microsoft also said that one of the biggest highlights of the agreement will be the introduction of Microsoft’s global program DreamSpark, under which a student can get access to the suite of Microsoft Software Development tools at no cost. 50,000 technical students are estimated to benefit from DreamSpark.

Mr Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Microsoft India, commented, “Maharashtra has always been among the leading Indian states when it comes to progressiveness. As the state focuses on enhancing its socio-economic index, we believe IT will play a key enabling role, and it is a matter of pride for us to partner in this effort.”