Please click here to view the analysis of the oral, written and CS assessments conducted at Asha in 2024-25.

ACE Winners Turn Prizes into Progress – Batch 1 & 2

Asha Computer Education (ACE) is the flagship initiative by Asha, to bring computer literacy to government school classrooms. In October 2023, ACE took a major leap forward by training 52 government teachers in Thiruvallur district to deliver Asha’s one-year computer science curriculum across 52 schools. Over several months, teachers underwent intensive, hands-on training to master the curriculum. As they learned, they simultaneously began teaching students in their schools, supported consistently by Asha’s expert computer science educators.

ACE Impressions – Batch 1

As per the program design, the students spend the last leg of the course in creating a project. We received 373 project submissions from 50 government schools. Out of the 373 projects, 17 projects were selected to be showcased before external judges for Asha’s first ACE Impressions which was held at Amazon’s office in the World Trade Centre, Perungudi.

The students showcased an outstanding array of topics that captivated and delighted the judges. You can read the full report here. Out of 17 participating teams, three emerged victorious, claiming a combined prize money of ₹4,20,000!

• 1^st place – GHS Murukkampattu, winning prize money of INR 1,80,000

• 2nd place – PUMS Nallatur, winning prize money of INR 1,40,000

• 3rd place – GHS Athimancheripet, winning prize money of INR 1,00,000

  

The funds were allocated to schools with the intent of setting up computer labs or addressing other urgent infrastructural needs.

• At GHS Murukampattu, although we initially proposed establishing a computer lab, the school requested that the funds be directed toward renovating their toilets. We honored their request and undertook the toilet renovation project.

• PUMS Nallatur highlighted their need for tablets for students, along with tables and chairs. Accordingly, we provided the required devices and furniture.

• GHS Athimancheripet, which already houses a hi-tech lab, sought support for its renovation. At their request, the prize money was channeled into upgrading the facility.

To avoid disrupting classes, the renovation work at GHS Murukampattu and GHS Atimencheripet was carried out during the summer break. The tablets and furniture for PUMS Nallatur were delivered after schools reopened in June 2025.

1^st Prize Winner – GHS Murukampattu

The Government High School in Murukampattu serves 154 students across classes 6 to 10. The school had toilets in a dismal state, rendering them unusable for the students. The toilets lacked proper plumbing, the roofs and doors were extensively damaged, and the washbasins were broken. Through Asha’s Sugadharam initiative—an ongoing effort to improve sanitation in schools we support—we have renovated several such facilities over the years. Given our experience in executing similar projects, we felt well-prepared and confident to take up the task.

The project began with clearing the area of debris and fallen leaves. The existing dilapidated toilets were removed, and four new units were installed—two in the girls’ restroom and two in the boys’. Though there was an overhead water tank, the plumbing system was extensively damaged. We removed the old pipelines and replaced them with new ones, along with installing new taps in both restrooms.

Since the school lacked handwashing facilities, we added new washbasins. The damaged doors were repaired using welding to fix cracks and structural issues, followed by a fresh coat of paint to enhance their appearance. New roof sheets were installed. The surrounding area also received a complete repaint.

The entire renovation was completed over two weeks at a cost of ₹1,41,760. The remaining funds were utilized to purchase a laptop for the school.

The toilets were inaugurated by Asha Volunteer Mr. Rajaraman in June 2025.

2^nd Prize Winner – PUMS Nallatur

Panchayat Union Middle School, Nallatur is in Thiruvallur, Tamilnadu with a student strength of over 80. The school was in need to tables, chairs and tabs for the use of children. We procured 6 units of tables and 24 units of chairs at a cost of INR 36,366. We also purchased 10 units of tabs at a cost of INR 1,05,029 for the students. The furniture and tabs were distributed to the students once the school reopened in June 2025.

3^rd Prize Winner – GGHSS Athimanjeripet

Located in Thiruvallur, Tamil Nadu, Government Girls Higher Secondary School Atimanjeripet caters to 164 students. The school’s Hi-tech lab was in need of some sprucing up. The school has just spruced up the main building and they also wanted this lab building to be brought on par with the rest of the school.

To enhance the facility, we installed 4 ceiling fans and 5 LED tube lights, along with providing 10 chairs for student seating. Necessary electrical repairs were also carried out to ensure the lab’s safe and functional operation. Both the interior and exterior of the lab received a fresh coat of paint, giving it a renewed and welcoming look. All the benches and desks in the whole school also received a fresh coat of paint.

The total cost of the renovation work amounted to ₹75,060. The remaining funds were utilized to purchase a desktop computer for the school.

Asha volunteer and Project coordinator, Mr. Rajaraman visited the school in June and spoke to the HM and teachers.

ACE Impressions – Batch 2

Amazon graciously hosted the Impression event once again at their Brigade World Trade Centre office in Perungudi, Chennai, on Saturday, 21 June 2025. Teams from Thiruvallur, Thoothukudi, and Thiruvannamalai took part in the competition, which followed the same format as ACE Batch 1, with 17 teams vying for the top spot. You can read the full report here.

The winning teams of Batch 2 are-

• 1^st Prize – GHSS Melsevalampadi (Villupuram) – INR 1,60,000

• 2^nd Prize – PUMS Singarajapuram (Thiruvallur) – INR 1,30,000

• 3^rd Prize- PUMS Ganalapadi (Thiruvannamalai) – INR 1,00,000

• Judges’ Favorite- GGHSS Ettaiyapuram (Thoothukudi) – INR 40,000

The prize money was allocated to schools to improve computer facilities. Since the schools expressed other pressing needs, the money was utilized to fulfil the same-

• GHSS Melsevalampadi (Villupuram) – The school required an elevated stage to conduct its events and functions, and requested our support for its construction.

• PUMS Singarajapuram (Thiruvallur) -The school already has a computer lab and requested us to help with civil and electrical repairs.

• PUMS Ganalapadi (Thiruvannamalai) -The school classroom was in need of tables and benches which were provided.

• GGHSS Ettaiyapuram (Thoothukudi) – School was provided with a screen and projector.

1^st Prize Winner – GHSS Melsevalampadi (Villupuram)

This is an Upper Primary, Secondary, and Higher Secondary school with nearly 400 students across various grades. While the school already had a functional computer lab, they needed an elevated stage to host events. Our project coordinator in Villupuram facilitated the construction through local masons. The stage, measuring 20 x 20 x 3 feet, was built during the school break to avoid any disruption to regular activities.

2nd Prize Winner – PUMS Singarajapuram (Thiruvallur)

The school, located in Tiruttani in Thiruvallur district, has 79 students enrolled from Grade 1 to 8. The school already had a Hi-tech lab in place, but it required essential repairs to make the space more functional and comfortable.

Previously, the room had only a basic cement floor. To improve the environment, we laid vitrified tiles for a cleaner and more durable surface. We also installed four ceiling fans and four tube lights to ensure proper ventilation and lighting. Additionally, we carried out electrical upgrades, including fixing the piping, replacing old wiring, and installing a new junction box to support safe and efficient power distribution. These improvements have significantly enhanced the usability of the lab for both students and teachers.

3rd Prize Winner – PUMS Ganalapadi (Thiruvannamalai)

PUMS Ganalapadi is a school with over 200 students studying from class 1 to 8. The winning team from Grade 8 requested for new tables and benches to be provided for their classroom. The metal furniture was delivered to the school in August 2025.

Judges’ Choice Winners – GGHSS Ettaiyapuram (Thoothukudi)

The students of GGHSS Ettiyapuram were felicitated at their school, and our Pearl Project coordinator visited to hand over a projector and screen for the school’s use.

by Rajaraman Krishnan, Volunteer Asha Chennai

Asha Chennai started the ACE (ஆஷா வழி கணினி கல்வி or Asha Computer Education) program at the first batch of 52 schools in Oct 2023. The program was launched in the second batch of 53 schools in Aug 2024. It was started at another 40 schools in same districts in June 2025. The aim of the program is to implement a two year CS curriculum using government teachers themselves at these schools. This will help prove the scalability and quality of our curriculum, pedagogy, training model, evaluation model and our overall delivery. The hope is that a successful implementation of the program over a two-year period will lay the foundation for a broader adoption.

The ACE website describes the program in details. This report extends the following older reports.

• Report on the ACE Impressions Batch 1 and Batch 2 held in March and June 2025 respectively.
• Infrastructure assessment report from the ACE and other schools we work with done in April 2025.
• ACE Status report from May 2024 at the end of the 2023-24 academic year.
• ACE v2 Inauguration report from Aug 2024.
• ACE v1 Inauguration report from Oct 2023.

There has been a long gap from the previous status report written in May 2024. This report will provide an update on the staus of the ACE as on date.

Schools, Teachers and Batches

On Oct 19^th 2023, the program was inaugurated and the first training session was completed with teachers from 52 schools – all from Thiruvallur District. This was then expanded by another 53 schools from Thiruvallur, Thoothukudi, Thiruvannamalai and Villupuram in Aug 2024. When we started the program in Oct 2023, it was started as an extended one-year program to complete only by end of the 24-25 academic year focusing on Digital Literacy but with a little bit of exposure to programming also thrown in. However, when we launched the second batch in Aug 2024, it was structured as a two-year curriculum. The first year covered Digital Literacy and the second year covered programming. As the program started late for the second batch, we pruned down a few of the lessons so that the schools may complete the first year of the program within the 2024-25 academic year.

In what went beyond our wildest expectations, all the 105 schools from both the batches went on to complete the ACE program as scheduled. This was especially remarkable for the second batch. They didn’t have the time to work on the project before the schools closed by the end of April 2025. They stayed open and had the students coming in till 12^th of May to complete and submit the projects! Read the details here.

Note that there was no official requirement that the teachers stick with this course and complete it. And these teachers had several other works which were mandatory as most of the teachers were subject or secondary grade teachers. The schools also had several other pulls on the resources, the teachers time being the most important one. Yet all the schools completed the course for all their students and with quality as will be detailed in the coming sections.

As we moved into 2025-26, some of the first batch schools did not continue. The most important reason was that the teachers had been posted to a different school. As the first batch was started as a one-year program, they often started with the 7^th standard in the case of middle schools so that they will complete the program when they finish the 8^th standard. In the case of high / higher secondary schools, they started with the 8^th standard so that these children will wrap up the ACE program by the 9^th standard as their schedule becomes very tight in 10^th standard because of the board exams. Therefore they couldn’t continue the second year program for the same batch of students. In some cases, they once again offered the first year program for a new class of students and in some cases they dropped out. The batch 2 schools have continued on to teach programming for the same class of students. The following graph shows the schools in the 3 batches and what they are doing now.

Computers Donated and Tracked

Laptop Donations

Laptop donations from Amazon has been critical in implementing the ACE program (and other programs of Asha). We have received the following donations of laptops from Amazon.

Oct 2023 267 Laptops.

May 2024 500 Laptops

Dec 2024 500 Laptops

Feb 2025 200 Laptops

July 2025 500 Laptops

We initially started by distributing one laptop to each teacher and up to 3 laptops to each school depending on their need. We weren’t providing laptops to schools with High Tech lab. However over time, we have had to donate laptops to even schools with High Tech lab as that infrastructure was not available for the ACE program often. We purchased 52 laptops for the ACE v1 teachers. For the ACE v2 and v3 teachers, we only provided donated laptops. The donated laptops from Amazon have mostly been of good quality and have served us well. Here is a graph that shows the number of laptops given to the schools.

Note that this graph does not include the one laptop given to each teacher in the school to implement the program. To 11 schools we have only given the teacher laptops. At the other end, there are two schools where we have given 8 laptops each and in addition a teacher laptop as well. In total, we have given 492 laptops to the schools and another 152 lapto     ps to teachers. Of these about 20 laptops are currently not working.

Maintenance of the Laptops

If there are any problems with the laptops, the govt teachers first reach out to our trainers who have been trained to do basic maintenance themselves. If they are unable to fix the problem, at each location we have a system engineer who will then look at the problem. If it is not possible to fix soon or some parts are required, we replace the laptop with a spare and continue working on the problem. For some of the problems we would also need to give the laptop to a service centre. If the problem can still not be solved, we harvest the good parts and condemn the device.

Asset Tracker

With a large number of laptops spread across an equally large number of schools, we have done some automation of the asset tracking process.

Each laptop is given an asset ID and an asset ID sticker with the asset ID and a QR code like below is stuck on the laptop. Once a quarter we have the teachers at all the school scan the QR code and report the status of the laptops. You can try scanning the QR Code below to report the status of a virtual laptop!

This enables us to know the status of all the laptops. In addition to this we also have a pinger app that runs on all laptops we have provided which when connected to the Internet periodically send an “I am alive” message to our server. We can thus also know that the laptops are really being used and not just gathering dust in some bureau.

Problem reporting and tracking of the problems, is done using Google Forms and a Google sheet currently. This Asha Chennai Computer Maintenance (or CCM) is also being brought into our own server and can be triggered from the same QR code mentioned above.

Work (Output) Tracking

At the start of the ACE program, we were using a Google Sheet to track the work being done by the teachers and the trainers. Towards the end of 2023-24 academic year, we developed forms for teachers and trainers to report the work they were doing. Each time the teacher teaches a lesson, they report the detail. This includes the following,

• School (comes from the session).
• Teacher (comes from the session).
• Class and section (comes from the session unless they take multiple classes / sections).
• Date (comes from the system).
• Lesson they taught (comes prepopulated if they scaned the QR code at the end of the lesson in their teacher manual).
• Attendance – Has to be entered. Note that the total class/section strength is entered into the system at the beginning of the year.
• Comments or Notes if any.

As you can see from the above, there is very little that the teacher has to enter manually. They just scan the QR code at the end of the lesson and most of the form comes prepopulated and they just enter the attendance, add any comments and submit.

Trainers who visit schools to assist/observe a class also submit a form on the class they observed. They are required to submit their own (trainer) name as well. Otherwise the form is similar.

Data Approval process

The teacher and trainer form submissions are viewed by “Lead Teachers” who then approve or reject the data entry. They can also edit and approve the data. This is then approved on a monthly basis by the “Administrator” for the ACE program.

Curriculum Tracker

For each curriculum we are implementing (ie. 1^st year or DL, 2^nd year Asha programming, 2^nd year CSF Express programming), we have a tracker which shows the progress of the implementation over the academic year. In the picture below you can see the curriculum tracker for ACE v2 Digital Literacy in the year 2024-25.

Each green square represents a lesson taught at the school. The reason some of the lessons (eg. L10 to L15) are white for most schools is that we dropped some of the lessons given the paucity of time. Dark green squares represent visits on that day by Asha trainers. The number in the square indicates that the same lesson was repeated multiple times either because the group was broken into two and separate classes taken or the lesson had to

be repeated. If the lesson was taught in the wrong order (not in the pictures here), then that will be shows with a small red ‘x’ inside. Clicking on the lesson numbers at the top will open the lesson plan for that lesson and hovering will show the lesson title. Clicking on the green squares will provide the data entries (bo

th trainer data and teacher data) corresponding to that school-class-lesson combination.

Here are couple of more pictures showing the progress of the CSF-Express Programming and Asha-Programming curriculum this year.

As you can see the curriculum tracker provides a powerful tool to quickly get the status of the curriculum implementation at the schools and figure out any challenges at a school or with the curriculum.

How is ACE doing? – Term end Assessment

At the end of the 2024-25 academic year, Asha conducted assessments to check if the students had learnt the contents of the ACE first year curriculum. This was held in Feb-Mar 2025 for the ACE v1 schools and in Mar-Apr 2025 for the ACE v2 schools. This was rigorously conducted. At each school the trainer for that school was paired with another trainer to conduct the assessment with no participation by the teacher at that school. The assessment is conducted individually for each student on a computer as well as pen and paper. There were 4 alternate papers given for the students so that there is no possibility of copying. Here are the papers we used for ACE v1 and the papers we used for ACE v2.

Students’ Performance

Here is how the students performed in the assessments.

The high number of absentees had several reasons,

• Festivals in some villages meant there were lots of absentees.
• As CS is not a proper required subject, our CS exams were not treated with as much seriousness as the other subjects either by the school or by the students.
• Some of the children were indeed absent for good reaaon and there were also some mentally challenged children in these classes who could not have taken our assessment.

The important point to note is that because of time pressure, we could not go back to any of the schools to conduct the assessment a second time for the students who missed out on the assessment. We hope to improve upon this, this year.

The students who scored 8 marks or less in the assessment are considered to have failed. Those who scored 25 marks or more are considered as having passed with distinction. We have deliberately made the cut offs low so that we do not compromise on level of the assessment or the way it is graded. One broad observation from the assessment was that the students mostly did well in the practical questions like creating presentations or doing some work on Excel. They were struggling a lot more to answer questions like “A ______ is used to store multiple files together” where folder is one of the answer options! We believe this has to do with their poor reading skills.

How is ACE doing? – Endline Assessment

For an orthogonal (i.e. unrelated to our own curriculum) standardized (results can be compared across time and with other programs / organisations) assessment, we have been using the Northstar Digital Literacy Assessments. For the ACE programs we did not conduct a Baseline. However, since the ACE programs serves students in classes 6 to 9 in government schools just like our RTC program does, we used the baseline data from our RTCs. If anything, the RTC program baseline will have better results because these schools have more feeder schools that are supported by Asha and therefore more students come with some experience in Computer Science. Here is a table that shows the baseline from the RTC program and the endline from both the ACE batches.

As can be noted, across all the digital literacy areas covered by NorthStar, there is a significant improvement in the performance between baseline and endline. The improvement ranges from 25% to 45%. Note that we teach OpenOffice or LibreOffice and do not teach Microsoft Office or Google Docs. Despite that students have been able to demonstrate a competence even in handling unfamiliar tools. This is an important aspect of digital literacy in a constantly changing technology landscape.

How is ACE doing? – Project Work

Here are couple of reports on the ACE Impressions events for ACE v1 and ACE v2 batches. You can read these to understand the important role project work plays in the ACE program. While the competition played an important role in motivating the school and teacher to put in the best effort, the main purpose of project work is instructional. By doing the project work, children reinforce what they learnt over the whole year through goal-driven, intensive learning. Therefore, rather than just looking at the best projects which get chosen for the RTC Impressions project, we look two other factors.

Team Size

We aim for smaller team sizes. For the ACE v1 batch, there were a total of 373 projects were submitted with an average team size of 4.83. The ACE v2 batch submitted 470 projects with an average team size of 4.2. We were aiming for some number between 4 and 5 for both the batches and this was achieved. As the program matures, we will aim for smaller team sizes. There were schools that submitted as many as 15 to 20 projects. This is clearly a lot of work for the teacher to manage.

Average Quality of the Projects

All the projects are initially evaluated by lead teachers who then select the best 60 or so to be reviewed by the volunteers who then bring it down to about 17 projects for the final Asha Impressions event. When the lead teachers initially evaluate the projects, they check for the following parameters in the projects and award one mark for each:

• Minimum 10 Slides
• Content Fully covered
• Animation with Sounds
• Online Video
• Own Sound / Own Video
• Interaction
• Other Technical content

The 373 ACE v1 projects had an average score of 3.785 and the 470 ACE v2 projects had an average score of 3.895 (both out of 7). This indicates the incredible effort that has been put in by the teachers. The first two points which are a basic requirement of presentation were met by all the projects.

As we would expect, the projects that were selected by the lead teachers to be reviewed for the ACE Impressions and the projects which were finally selected for Asha Impressions were even better as can be seen in the graph below. With the experience gained by one cohort of teachers, the second cohort did even better as can also be seen.

Quality of the Best Projects

As mentioned earlier, we do not evaluate the program by just how the best teams do. But still, it makes us proud to see what can be achieved by the students with a program like ACE.

Here are some testimonials about the projects at the ACE Impressions events.

Mrs. Joan Mary, ACE Impressions V1 and V2 judge – It was my privilege to be a panel member for the presentations delivered by students from various schools. I was impressed with the confidence and energy each team brought with them. Most of the teams were able to answer the technical, content related questions which shows their enthusiasm, efforts and time spent to learn and create the presentations in a creative way. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole event by learning through the innovative thinking of these young minds. Kudos to ASHA team for creating such a positive impact in future generation!

Mr. Bala Vijay, ACE Impressions V1 judge – First of all I would like to thank my leadership and Asha for giving me an opportunity to be a judge for these amazing 17 projects that got shortlisted from about 250 projects originally submitted. I thoroughly enjoyed the presentations, the ideas and thoughts behind each of those projects. One thing I liked about these was that the students presented these projects with more joy and passion and not with fear. This clearly shows their readiness and depth of knowledge in the content and the technicalities of getting it done over the tool, in this case ppt. Kudos to the teachers and Asha who were the root that held this whole tree of event and I am sure these students would emerge with flying colours as was their presentation. And I was glad to witness the Corporate Social Responsibility that Amazon as a company holds. All the best and keep up the great work!!

This is my first ever event with Asha for education and this has broadened my idea how Amazon is supporting these kids under the ACE Impression program. It was such honor and pleasure to be part of the judging panel witnessing every single presentation curated by those young minds and enjoying their unique way of interacting with audience. Arun S, ACE Impressions 2 judge- As a judge for the Asha Impressions ACE program presentations, I was truly inspired by the remarkable talent and determination shown by the government school students. Despite limited resources, these young learners from 5th to 8th standard demonstrated impressive mastery of Open Office tools, presenting their work with confidence and enthusiasm.

Their innovative approaches and creative presentations proved that with proper guidance, these students can achieve outstanding results. The collaborative effort between Asha Foundation, Amazon volunteers, and Teachers created an environment where these young talents could truly shine. This experience highlighted the impact of corporate-NGO partnerships in bridging the digital divide and creating meaningful educational opportunities for underprivileged students. The students’ pride and enthusiasm made this volunteering experience truly memorable.

Success of the Program

The Asha Computer Education or ACE has been a tremendous success. We have evaluated it through various outcome measurements, some of which were detailed above, and it has done very well by every measure. Here are some of the aspects of this.

Curriculum and its Implementation

The first year curriculum needed to be reduced by a few lessons for ACE v2 because the program started only in August of 2024. In a full academic year, the curriculum and the list of lessons was adequately paced to be completed without any problems. See the progress of our curriculum for the ACE v2 Digital Literacy batch last year and the programming batches this year above in the section on Curriculum Tracker.

All the lessons in our lesson plan were structured as a set of exercises in line with our “Learn by Doing” pedagogy. There were no lessons that taught the students that the father of computer science is Charles Babbage or ask them to write down an memorise all the keyboard shortcuts in text document. Teachers who had already been teaching computer science sometimes had the tendency to revert to their old style. But teachers who were themselves learning CS for the first time, took to this like fish to water.

Teacher training methodology

This has been one of the biggest reasons for the poor performance of majority of the government programs. We employed a different model. Our teacher training was guided by the following approaches.

• “Teacher as a lead Learner”: This works well where the teacher is not an expert in the subject under question. Here the teacher is taught the lessons only a little before they teach it to the students. This also has the side-effect of a much more interactive classroom and demands a certain humility from the teacher who acknowledges that the children may also know more than them in some areas. This was a risk. Will the teacher adapt to this methodology? We found to our great satisfaction that they very easily adapted to this methodology. Some of the teachers who already knew computer science and have been teaching computer science struggled a little.
• Frequent training or Immediacy of training: We had one training session every month where the teachers learnt how to teach the next 4 or 5 lessons. Having the training closer to the actual use of the training ensures much better teaching, better conformance to the pedagogy etc.
• 

• Hand-holding at the point of delivery. Our trainers visited the schools once a month to observe and assist a class. In addition, they were available always for any doubts the teachers may have or problems they have with the infrastructure etc. Also, if a teacher missed a training session, our trainers on their next visit to the school, spent the time with the teachers to train them. This support visits also made us as an organization much more intimately aware of all the challenges the teachers were facing at the school like teacher schedule problems, computer lab scheduling problems, local issues with the community and the school etc.

All of these together have been responsible for all the teachers completing the curriculum and excellent performance from the students as well.

Processes for tracking output and outcome

As explained earlier, we implemented a process for output tracking which provided good information about the work done by the teachers and the progress of various schools in the implementation of the curriculum. It also yielded information about how our program was working in terms of support visits etc. Infrastructure tracking was also strengthened over the year and we have been able to manage our decisions regarding service of computers etc. better through this.

The measuring of the average quality of the projects was done for the first time in the ACE program by our lead teachers. The assessment tracking and conducting of the baseline and endline standardized assessment was started in our RTC program and was implemented in ACE as well.

Completion of the 1^st year program.

The extended first year for ACE v1 as well as the shrunk first year for ACE v2 got over by the end of the 2024-25 academic year. When we started ACE v1, we were hoping that 80% of the schools stay on to complete the program. Instead, 100% of the schools completed the program. Especially in the case of the ACE v2, the schools didn’t have the time to complete the projects. They continued to come to the school for two weeks after the annual exams, during holidays, to complete and deliver the projects. We were ourselves overwhelmed by the dedication and enthusiasm shown by these teachers. I visited some of these schools in early May to see their work in person. It was inspiring!

Within each school almost all the students participated in the project work. The assessment was not perfectly planned at our end and some 15% of the students missed our assessments. We will plan this better the next time.

Outcome measurements – Projects and Assessments

Projects were submitted by almost all the students in all the schools that participated in both the batches of ACE. As described in the section on “Project Work” above, all the projects met the basic quality criteria that we had set for them. The best projects submitted were excellent and, in many way, even excelled the projects submitted by Asha teacher lead teams in our other programs.

Our own course-end assessments revealed the learning levels of the children. The children mastered the things they need to do but not necessarily the language needed to express what they know.

In the standardized assessment based on the Northstar toolkit which is orthogonal to what we taught them, they showed significant improvements of 25% or so over a baseline which shows significant improvement in their digital literacy skills.

Continuation into the second year

As described in the “Schools, Teachers and Batches” section earlier, about 75% of the schools in ACE v1 and v2 continued into the second year of the program this 2025-26 academic year. Most of the dropouts occurred for reasons beyond the control. Of the 29 schools that dropped out, here is the breakup of the reasons.

Third party Impact Assessment

Asha Chennai engaged AuxoHub, an independent third-party consultancy specializing in evaluation for the social sector to study our ACE program. The study revealed how the program is reshaping rural classrooms through technology. AuxoHub conducted an independent impact assessment study of the ACE program between Jan to March, 2025 covering 30 government school teachers, 5 Asha trainers, 10 school administrators, 40 students and 10 parents. The wide-ranging study looked at the impact on the teachers own learning and teaching of CS, the students learning, the impact on their learning of other subjects, the changing perceptions in the community etc. You may read the complete report here. The impact of the ACE program has been tremendous in all these areas and more!

ACE Program in 2025-26

Both the batches of the ACE program have moved into the 2025-26 academic year. 67 of the schools moved to do programming. We have over the last year, been recognized as a regional partner of Code.org and are in many ways working closely with them. Therefore, we decided to try Code.org’s CSF Express course on a subset of these schools. In addition to these another 46 schools got added in the v3 batch of ACE. Currently the breakup looks as follows,

Digital Literacy or 1^st year curriculum: 46 new schools plus 12 continuing schools = 56 schools.

Programming with Asha or Scratch based programming (2^nd year curriculum): 42 schools.

Programming with CSF Express course (2^nd year curriculum): 25 schools.

This gives us a good opportunity to evaluate and improve our own programming curriculum against a world standard! The structure in terms of approx. 30 hours of instructions followed by 10 hours of project work and finally the assessments and Asha Impressions are all continuing for all the three groups.

Spark and ACE

A big challenge and opportunity for Asha Chennai’s CS programs and in particular ACE is the introduction of the Spark curriculum by the TN government. It was unfortunate that Asha couldn’t be involved with the committee that framed the curriculum and the implementation plan. We are seeing the roll out of Spark in some of the schools we ourselves support. At the ACE schools the situation currently is as follows.

1. None of the schools have pulled out of the ACE program because of this which is another indicator of how our program is perceived by the schools.
2. Through them we are learning how the Spark program is being implemented.
3. The teachers are asking us to train them in Spark the way we have trained them in ACE. We are yet to take a formal decision regarding this.

We are seeing several problems in the implementation of Spark.

Curriculum as a textbook instead of a set of learning Objectives:

In India most boards for all their subjects publish a textbook which contains within it the curriculum meant to be taught. Occasionally separate teacher’s manuals may also be published (which is not there for Spark). This poses several problems. It forces a style of pedagogy for the learning objectives which cannot be altered. It also pushes the teachers to frame their assessments based on the textbook instead of based on the learning objectives. Even though Asha has a better way to achieve the same learning objectives, we will not be able to implement our curriculum.

Spiral or Graded curriculum instead of a set of distinct courses:

The same topics, in this case Digital Literacy, online tools, AI and coding are there every year instead of going deep in say Digital Literacy the first year, coding the second year, AI the third year and so on. The first model is correctly practiced in subjects like Maths where it makes sense as there are a large number of basic skills that the student needs to acquire. But in a subject like CS, it is better to be intensive in one area. As we have been finding out, it not as through children forget Digital Literacy when learning coding or AI. The DL learning anyway gets reinforces even while coding and similarly coding is reinforced when doing AI and so on.

Extensive vs Intensive Curriculum:

One of the things we have been following as an axiom is that tools will keep evolving and therefore rather that teach a lot of tools, provide intensive learning through project work which makes it easier for them to learn new tools they have not encountered. However, Spark curriculum introduces the children to a wide array of tools and provides little space for creativity or critical thinking. Many of the tools they have used are very good like Geogebra for teaching Maths, PhET for teaching Science etc. These are vast tools and in our Sprint program we have been finding how difficult these tools are to master. Having 10 or more new tools every year make the teachers and students task impossible! Simple, small set of tools which they use thoroughly will be easier to implement and they will also end us learning more about Computer Science at large. Further many of these tools should be moved to the Maths and Science curriculum instead of be part of the Spark curriculum.

Full rollout instead of a year-wise rollout:

They have rolled out all the year programs right in the beginning. It would be better to start all classes 6 to 9 with 6^th std textbook and next year move classes 7 to 9 to the 7^th std textbook and so on. How will children learn robotics with Python in class 9 without learning basic coding in classes 6 to 8. Does it make sense to learn Spreadsheet when they haven’t even done basic typing and formatting (bold, italics, font colour/size/style etc.) in a text document? This also places enormous load on the teacher to master all the four years’ curriculum within a short span of time.

Teacher Training

They gave 2 days of training for the teachers (most of whom are new to computer science just like our ACE teachers were) and they were expected to start implementing the program which did not happen at all. The education department also seems to deploying some trainers to assist the teachers in their difficulties. It is to be seen how this works.

Output and Outcome Tracking

This ultimately is where most of the government education initiatives fail. The teachers will be asked to report voluminous data which doesn’t translate into anything tangible for them. There will be no proper verification of the data and therefore the teachers will start resorting to just fudging the data. This can be seen in program after program. Finally, the assessment will be based on the textbook and implemented without scrutiny but with penalty if the students do not perform which will result in even more fudging of data. Output reporting through EMIS for Spark also seems to be heading that way.

We feel at Asha Chennai, we can contribute a lot to Spark through our experience with ACE (and RTCs).

• Curriculum inputs – A course-based model that shows significant gain in knowledge in one area without it diminishing over the years. This will cover all the learning objectives of Spark in the same 4 years and achive a lot more.
• Teacher Training – Our “Teacher as a Lead Learner” model of training and pedagogy combined with support at the point of delivery has worked very well. Spark will do well to incorporate that.
• Project work – We have been focusing on projects as a key tool in the children’s learning and it has been very effective. Incentivising the teachers through the Impressions event and tracking of average project metrics is showing very good results.
• Output and Outcome tracking – Our reporting system which minimizes the work a teacher needs to do to report their work combined with lots of backend work to gain insights from that data and encouraging teachers to be honest in their reporting is also working well. Rigorous assessments based on LOs with little penalty for honest reporting is again the way to achieve progress.

Future of ACE

Where does that leave Asha and our various programs?

• ACE as a pilot can continue till Spark displaces it in various schools. Even in schools that are implementing Spark, they can also implement ACE if they so desire. We can support such schools in their Spark rollout as well.
• However, extending it to all classes and beyond 2 years will become impossible. We were hoping to eventually make it a proper 4-year curriculum with AI, Robotics and other advanced topics (like web development, media editing etc.). This will have to take a back seat. This is only partly because of Spark. Even now only 2 schools are implementing both the first year and second year curriculum. These two schools have part-time computer teachers. Other teachers do not have the bandwidth to do this on their own unless government gives proper instructions to school for this (like they are doing with Spark).
• Rolling out a 3^rd and 4^th year curriculum is also challenging without teachers developing significant expertise in Computer Science. With the existing crop of teachers, we are just about able to implement the 2^nd year curriculum. Govt will also face this challenge with the 9^th std curriculum.
• Our other programs like Sprint (working with primary and middle schools on all aspects of the school), RTCs (centres for teaching govt children advanced technology for free outside of the school), Explore (give basic exposure to CS/AI and other tech for students in classes 6 to 9) can all continue without much changes.

Asha will continue to reach out to the government to help them implement the Spark program in various ways and also hopefully influence its direction in the coming years. Our partnership with organisations like Code.org, Amazon, IIT Madras etc. will be very helpful in this regard.

Amazon TIS Workshop Report – July 2025

49 students and 10 teachers from Asha Chennai were invited by Amazon to Amazon TIS Makerspace in Bengaluru. Partnering with The Innovation Story, this initiative provides under-served students in grades 5th to 12th with immersive, hands-on learning experiences, nurturing their curiosity and equipping them with innovative technological skills to become future change-makers.

Our students and teachers had fun exploring 3D printers, robotics kits, and design software at the vibrant TIS Makerspace in Bangalore. Guided by the ever-enthusiastic Mr. Akhil, whose love for robotics made every session both fun and insightful, they got creative—trying, tinkering, and building.

Here is a report by Ms. Kumari, Lead Teacher at Asha RTCs-

From July 4th to 7th, RTC students and teachers from Kannigaipair, Periyapalayam, Seethanjeri, Thomur, and Kanagamma Chatram embarked on an exciting journey to Bangalore for the TIS workshop.

(Note that another team from Thoothukudi district travelled overnight with students and teachers from Kalugumalai, Kayathar and Nallatinpudhur RTCs to arrive at Bangalore on July 4^th morning. And a smaller team of just 1 teacher and 4 students came from the Kilpennathur RTC near Thiruvannamalai. Volunteers Rajaraman and Pushpaleela also came on their own by a morning train from Chennai.)

Day 1 – July 4th: Wired Robotics Session

We began our journey at 2:00 a.m. in two vehicles and enjoyed breakfast and lunch along the way. We reached Malleshwaram, Bangalore by around 3:00 p.m., slightly delayed for the workshop. The journey was difficult and took much longer than anticipated. Despite arriving late, the students participated enthusiastically in the Wired Robotics session. They learned to connect motors with wires, build simple robotic models, and enjoyed experimenting with their creations.

Day 2 – July 5th: Autonomous Robotics & Lalbagh Visit

The second day focused on Autonomous Robotics, where students explored programming techniques to make robots move using code. They were introduced to programming functions like setup() and loop() to control robotic behavior—an engaging and fascinating experience for all.
In the evening, we visited Lalbagh Botanical Garden, where the children had a delightful time exploring the natural beauty.

Day 3 – July 6th: 3D Pen, Drone & 3D Printer

The morning session introduced students to the 3D Pen, which was their first exposure to 3D drawing tools. They eagerly created various 3D shapes and designs. In the afternoon, students explored Drone Technology—learning to assemble and fly drones. They also had an exciting session on 3D Printing, where they witnessed how a 3D printer works and were thrilled by the possibilities of this technology.

In the evening, we visited the serene ISKCON Temple in Bangalore.

(Note the teams from Thoorhukudi and Thiruvannamalai as well as volunteers Rajaraman and Pushpaleela left overnight back to their places on Day 3.)

Day 4 – July 7th: Cultural Sites & Bannerghatta National Park

On our final day, we visited the Bull Temple, followed by breakfast near Bannerghatta National Park. The visit to the national park was a highlight, as the children thoroughly enjoyed seeing a wide variety of animals and birds in their natural habitats. We departed in the afternoon and reached home by nightfall.

In conclusion

The TIS workshop provided the students with a rich blend of hands-on learning, exposure to cutting-edge technology, and memorable sightseeing. It was a truly enjoyable and educational experience for everyone involved.

Budget Utilization

The total cost incurred for the event amounted to ₹3,26,394. This expenditure was distributed across various essential categories, as outlined below:

With a total of approximately 59 participants, the per person cost comes to ₹5,532.

One of Asha’s key annual initiatives is the distribution of stationery materials to government schools supported by us. With our long standing association with government schools, we have an understanding of the needs of students and schools across our various projects. We procure essential materials such as notebooks, pens, pencils, geometry sets, and other learning tools.

This effort goes beyond simply handing out supplies—it’s about ensuring that every child has the basic resources to participate fully in the classroom. In many government schools, access to quality stationery is limited, and students often struggle to keep up due to lack of materials. By bridging this gap, we help foster a more inclusive and equitable learning environment.

Every year, we procure materials and distribute them across schools in our various projects. You may view the stationery materials distribution album for 2025 here.

In Tamilnadu, we are present in-

• Thiruvallur (Project Sangamam),
• Thoothukudi (Project Pearl),
• Thiruvanamalai (Project Thulasi),
• Thiruvarur (Project Kaveri), and
• Chennai (Project Poornavidhya)

In Uttar Pradesh at-

• Rajatalab (Project Rajatalab) and
• Mirzapur (Project Mirzapur)

Project Rajatalab

This year, Project Rajatalab kick started the material distribution in August 2025. Asha Project corodinators, Mr. VS Sriram and Ms. Jayalakshmi visited Rajatalab from Chennai to participate in the distribution. Asha distributed materials to 12 schools benefitting 2,578 students in Rajatalab.

Here is the list of materials provided-

Schools we distributed at –

Project Mirzapur

Asha supports 7 schools in Mirzapur. Asha teachers visited the schools and distributed stationery materials to students in the beginning of September.

Materials distributed at Mirzapur are-

Schools we distributed at –

Project Thulasi (Thiruvanamalai)

The procurement for the Thulasi project was done locally. Our project coordinator organized the distribution of the materials to schools during the month of August. We distributed stationery materials to 26 schools supported by Asha in the district. Through this drive we reached 2,083 students this year.

Here is the list of materials provided-

The schools we distributed to are-

Project Pearl (Thoothukudi)

The material procurement at Thoothukudi was also done locally by our project coordinator. Asha tecahers and project corodinators visited schools and handed over materials to the students. We distributed the materials in September to 28 schools reaching 2,322 students.

Here is the list of items provided to the schools and students-

We distributed to the below schools supported by Asha-

Project Cauvery

Like last year, we continued our support to 18 schools in Thiruvarur under Project Cauvery. Our project coordinator procured materials and distributed them to schools in September covering 982 students in the project.

Materials distributed at Thiruvarur are as below-

Here is the list of schools we distributed to-

Project Sangamam (Thiruvallur)

The distributed at Thiruvallur began in September after the Term 1 vacation. Our project co coordinators and teachers from Sangamam distributed the materials to 87 schools reaching 4,091 students.

Materials distributed at Thiruvallur schools are as below-

Here is the list of schools we distributed to-

Project PoornaVidhya (Chennai)

At Chennai, we distributed materials at 12 schools reaching 1,863 students. Asha volunteers Ms. VS Sriram and Ms. Kasturi visited schools and distributed the materials.

Materials distributed at Chennai schools are as below-

Here is the list of schools we distributed to-

Press Coverage

Below are some media reports featured in local newspapers covering the recent stationery distribution-

Sept 2025 by Rajaraman Krishnan

IITM Pravartak and Asha launched the first two Rural Technology Centers (RTCs) in January 2022. Several more have been started including our latest one in the village of Kottur in Thiruvarur District. Currently we are running 13 RTCs.

The RTC website talks about the rationale behind establishing these RTCs. This report will update and take further what has been explained in the following older reports.

• RTC Status report from June 2024 gives the details of each of the RTCs as of June 2024.
• RTC Status report from Aug 2023 explains some of the basic operational choices of the RTCs.
• RTC Impact Assessment Report from Aug 2024 talks about how we are measuring Impact at the RTCs.

RTCs and Enrollment

Three new RTCs were started for the Feb 2025 to July 2025 term. These were started in Feb 2025 at Thirutani, Thirupatchur and Uthukottai, all in Thiruvallur district. Here a report on the inauguration of these RTCS. Another RTC was started at Kottur in Thiruvarur district in July 2025.

With this there are now a total of 13 RTCs. Here are two charts that show the number of RTCs and total number of students enrolled at the RTCs over the various terms.

Note that the 3^rd and 4^th batches were a little anomalous. The RTCs at Kayathar and Kalugumalai, being small towns, saw very large number of students enrolling but many of them were not serious about learning the courses and therefore dropped out. We are maintaining a completion ratio of about 70% in the last few terms and our aim with the more mature RTCs is to increase the completion percentage to about 80%.

Here are the number of students who completed various courses organized by the courses.

Note that Advanced Courses include all courses other than Digital Literacy and Programming.

Innovations at the RTCs

The status report from Aug 2023 and our RTC webpage explain the basic aspects of our RTC operations.

• Centre paired with one or two high/higher secondary schools close to the centre. Basic CS education at the schools and advanced courses at the centres.
• One or two teacher RTCs depending on the number of students enrolling. We expect 60 students to enroll at 1-teacher RTCs and we expect an enrollment of 100 students.
• RTC operates in 1.5 hour sessions which can be combined to form 3 hour sessions. Each student typically comes for 2 1.5 hour sessions a week.
• Six-month terms – Feb to July and Aug to Jan. One or 1.5 months will be holidays. Each course at the RTC will require 25 to 30 lessons each of which will can be completed in one 1.5 hour session. Therefore these will take about 3 to 3.5 months of the term. The remaining part will be used for project work, assessment etc.
• Centres are equipped with about 10 to 20 computers (mostly laptops), have a broadband Internet connection, and most of them have UPS power backup as well.
• RTC Impressions at the end of the term showcases the best projects in every course over the term and acts as a motivator for the students and teachers to produce their best effort.
• Our own assessment is conducted to check if the students have learnt all the things taught in the course. A baseline/endline assessment using NorthStar’s toolkit (skills tested is quite orthogonal to what we teach) is conducted to measure how much the students have progressed through the course.

While these remain the same, here are some changes that are happening.

Infrastructure at the RTCs

With laptop donations from Amazon, all our RTCs are well equipped with computers these days. In some of the RTCs we have been able to add a printer. Most of the RTCs have also gotten either a projector or a big screen TV. While a Smart Class system would have been ideal, teachers can now teach a class connecting their laptops to either the TV or the projector.

We have also always viewed the RTCs as digital resource centers for students to come experience technology. Towards this end, we are also looking at purchasing some 3D printers and drones that will be made available to the RTCs that the children can play with. The 3D printers can also be used in our new Robotics course. Drones with camera can be used in our media editing course. We are planning to see how we can also incorporate programmable drones into our curriculum.

Amazon TIS Makerspace Training

Asha is partnering with Amazon on various computer education related programs. As a part of that, they invited us to bring our children to the Makerspace they have built in partnership with TIS (The Innovation Story) in Bengaluru. In July we took 50 children from our various RTCs to the Amazon TIS Makerspace. They got an exposure to a lot of latest technologies like Robotics, Drones, 3D Pens, 3D printers etc. TIS also prepares teams for various premier Robotic competitions like First Robotics, FirstTech Challenge etc. The students could see the kind of robots that the TIS teams have created for their competitions.

For many of the students, this is also the first time they are travelling anywhere overnight outside of their homes and relatives’ homes. It was a great experience for them. We have agreed with Amazon to bring 50 of our children to this training 3 times a year (at the beginning of each academic term).

Course Designing and Development

See the “Courses Offered” section below for more details about the courses. The first two courses in basic digital literacy and basic programming (Scratch) were compressed versions of our old Eight year curriculum. The first 3 Advanced Courses that came after that were courses from Code.org’s CS Discoveries (Web Development, Javascript Animations and Physical Computing). Then we started designing our own advanced courses.

Volunteers work with our own software development team in Chennai to first give the basic structure of the course. Then the developer team works with a teacher team from the RTCs to specify the details of the course and to create a 30-hour lesson plans for the same. The lesson plans are typically done by the teacher teams. This way we have been able to create a set of technically sound courses which are also at a level that is suitable for the students. The new courses designed in this manner include,

• Media Editing – One of our most successful and popular courses offered now by most RTCs.
• Web Development 2.0 – The first version of it was too long. We have created another version that is more suitable for the 6-month terms at our RTCs. It is being implemented in 2 RTCs.
• Robotics 1.0 – This has been designed and is being rolled out in 3 RTCs. It is one of the most anticipated courses and by next term expected to be offered in most of our RTCs.
• Artificial Intelligence – We expect to have this ready by the Feb 2026 term.
• Robotics 2.0 – This will be ready by either the Feb 2026 or the Aug 2026 term.

Teacher Training and Software Development

Teacher training is something we have to constantly do as we are introducing new courses. New teachers are also constantly being added to the RTCs. There is a regular teacher training over video conference being handled by volunteers as well as the more senior teachers themselves. With our software development team getting involved in the course design, they have also got involved with the teacher training especially for the courses that they have designed.

We started trying another interesting experiment. The world over, one of the main problems is to keep the knowledge of the teachers up to date especially in a fast changing area like Computer Science. We felt the best way to achieve this is to get the teachers also involved in software development. This will serve multiple purposes.

1. Teachers will learn the latest tools and methods of software development and gain an understanding of the real-world challenges in doing this.
2. As the software development in Asha is geared towards education, teachers’ participation will bring in their expertise on the needs of the school/teacher/students into the development process. The software developers will also gain from this experience in their midst.
3. Given a large difference in salaries between software developers and teacher this will provide the teachers an opportunity to earn some extra money and even transition to a developer role. It will also provide Asha an opportunity to lower the cost of development.

Some teams of teachers have got involved in this kind of software development and the experiment has been progressing well!

Extension to our Baseline and Endline Assessment

We have been using the Northstar Digital Literacy Assessments to conduct Baseline and Endline assessments for a random sample of our students for a couple of years now. This was done for students who have just joined our Digital Literacy course and those who have just completed the same course. Starting from Feb/Mar 2025, we started doing the same assessment for students who have completed 3 courses with our RTCs. Note that Digital Literacy is the first course completed by our students (unless they directly start with programming). Therefore, by conducting the assessment after the completion of 3 terms, we are measuring if the students still retain their knowledge of digital literacy one year after the completion of the course. This retention can be due to two factors:

1. As they are continuing to use computers in their other courses and being with other student who are learning Digital Literacy they retain knowledge of the Digital literacy they learnt.
2. There is some stickiness to the DL they learnt and they have not forgotten what they learnt.

See the section below under assessments for more details.

Certificate Distribution Function

The Assessment and the RTC Impressions events mark the end of the term at the RTCs. Typically, after the RTC Impressions, the RTCs host a certificate distribution function for all the students who have obtained a certificate in that term (cleared the assessment and submitted an acceptable project for the course). They also give the children a good lunch during this time.

One of the main reasons for hosting the RTC Impressions event was to provide the children a way to develop the skills required to present their work to other, overcome stage fear etc. With the increase in the number of RTCs, this chance was getting harder to come by for most students. We decided this time to bring neighbouring RTCs together for the certificate distribution function and make this a platform for the students of these RTCs to showcase their projects before judges, while also facing Q&A. In these events Asha volunteers and staff acted as judges. Further this also would give the parents and the local school teachers an opportunity to see what these children are learning. This proved to be a great success at all the communities. Organised at local wedding halls, these brought together the parents, the students, the teachers, the govt. officials and the volunteers in a function. We hope to continue this new tradition.

Attendance Reporting

Currently the RTC teachers manually report attendance to their lead teacher. Students’ attendance is also manually maintained in attendance registers. We are working on an attendance and work reporting system. In the RTCs, there is a lot of self-learning that happens especially with more senior students. Therefore, we have created a work reporting system with a separate form for the teachers and one for the students. The teachers will primarily report the work that they do in the schools as well as whether the RTC was opened that day. The students will directly lesson that they worked on that day and whether the lesson was completed or not.

While these forms are already ready, we are in the process of developing a tracker to view the curriculum progress at the level of a course or at the level of an RTC. This will help us monitor how all the RTCs are progressing with the various courses. It will also enable to get a detailed view of the lessons that are proving to be difficult for the students etc.

It is also to be noted that the RTC work reporting system is being developed by a team of teachers guided by our development team.

Courses Offered

See the RTC impact assessment report from Aug 2024 for details of the courses as were offered and planned at that time. There are no changes in the following courses: Basic Digital Literacy, Basic Programming, Web Development – 1, Javascript Animations, Physical Programming, and Media Editing. In addition to these, the following courses have been started.

Web Development – 2 This takes off from where Web Development -1 course stopped. It teaches them how to develop a client-server webapp. It teaches them JavaScript, node, expressjs and a little bit of MySQL to implement the backend. Their project will be a full-stack web application. While this was introduced at 2 RTCs for the Feb 25 to July 25 batch, the initial version of the course was too long and those students are still continuing that course into the Aug 25 to Jan 26 batch as well. We have now shortened it to bring it within one term and will be rolling it out into more RTCs by the Feb 2026 term.

Robotics 1.0 In this course the students will learn how sensors and actuators can be used together to make a Robot perform something. This is built on top of the AdaFruit Circuit Playground Express (CPX) cards along with their Crickit. They will use Circuit Python to control a wide-variety of sensors and actuators. In addition to the sensors on the CPX card, they will use Ultrasonic Distance Sensor, IR Tracking/Avoidance Sensor, Joystick Module, Inductive Proximity Sensor, Moisture Sensor, Color Sensor, Rain Sensor, Photoresistor (external), Force Sensitive Resistor (FSR) etc. And in addition to the actuators in the CPX they will use Different Servo Motors – 180/360 in SG90 (3v), MG995/996 (5v), DC Motors, Stepper Motor, Speakers, Water pump, Relays etc. They will also learn some amount of design of various mechanical parts like Circular motion to drive wheels, Rotational to linear motion using Rack and pinions, gears and telescopic sliders, using servo motors and servo brackets to create 2 Degree of Freedom motion, Open/close or grip mechanisms using gears and servo motors, etc.

Artificial Intelligence Code.org offers a mini-module on Artificial Intelligence which teaches the students how deep learning works. We plan to add to it practical knowledge of how to use Chat GPT, Dall-e, Khanmigo and other popular AI tools. We further plan to teach the students how companies are using the AI tools and integrating it with other things that they are doing using prompt engineering.

Robotics 2.0 This will extend what they learnt in Robotics 1.0 is two main directions. They will learn to make the programs on the controllers work together with broader solutions running on host computers or servers. They will also extend the mechanical design of their solutions through use of 3D printers, drone mounted robots, etc.

Assessments

At the end of every term Asha conducts assessments rigorously. At each RTC teachers from other RTCs or from other Asha programs come to conduct the assessment. Each student takes the assessment individually on a computer. We have also provided translations for the questions in Tamil so that the students can answer on their own without seeking clarifications from the teachers. Further, for courses where there are lots of students (like Digital Literacy and Scratch Programming) we provide multiple alternate papers so that students sitting next to each other will not be able to see the answers from others.

Here are the assessment papers we used for the recent term.

Students show the assessment answers to the teachers conducting it and they are graded immediately. Here are some stats about the assessments and the number of students in different score ranges in the

Programming oriented courses like Scratch Programming and Physical Computing tend to be more difficult for the students than use of computer courses like Digital Literacy and Media Editing. The specific paper makes a difference as well.

Standardised Assessment (NorthStar)

See the RTC impact assessment report from Aug 2024 for details of the Northstar Digital Literacy Assessments and the performance of our students in the endline and baseline conducted at the end of the 4th and 5^th terms. As mentioned earlier, the main difference in the last two terms is that we have also conducted the same assessment for those who have completed 3 terms as well. Here are the results from Term 6 (Feb/Mar 2025). Note that the numbers in the brackets indicate the number of students the assessment was conducted for.

And, here are the results from Term 7 (Aug/Sept 2025).

There are some important aspects that any outcome measurement related to education should cover which we are covering through the Northstar Assessment.

1. Assessment should be orthogonal to / independent of the course that is being taught. Even for summative assessments, we say that they should be independently derived from the curriculum and not be derived from the lessons being taught. In the case of outcome measurement, it goes even further. Even the curriculum to be taught should be independently derived. Northstar assessments meets this criteria as our course and NorthStar assessments were independently designed. They are even test different tools like Microsoft Office and Google Docs that we do not even teach!
2. Related to the above point, the biggest proof of real learning is when transference occurs. i.e. Students are able to use the concepts they have learnt in a completely different context. To some extent Northstar assessments provides this as well.
3. Another important aspect of education and learning is the stickiness. It is one thing to know things immediately after they were taught. But it is much more important to remember at least the essence of what we learnt years from when they were taught to us. We have tried to test this to some extent by administering the same set of assessments for those who have completed 3 terms with us.
4. Random Sampling – The students selected for these assessments have been picked randomly across all the RTCs user Excel’s random number generator. But the sample sizes are not large enough to statistically give a tight bound on these numbers. But given the similarity of results across the terms, we can judge the general outcome of the courses.

Here are some conclusions from the data in the two tables above.

1. Across all the digital literacy areas covered by NorthStar, there is a significant improvement in the performance between baseline and endline. The improvement ranges from 25% to 45%.
2. The endline measured for those who have completed 3 terms is very close to those who have just now completed their Digital Literacy course. This indicates that there is a certain stickiness to the learning. This may not be just due to the stickiness of the learning but also because, they are continuing to use computers in their other courses and being with other student who are learning Digital Literacy. Also, those who are continuing to take courses in our RTCs are likely to be students who did well in their DL course. To really measure the stickiness, we will have to also include some students who completed their DL course with us but are not with the RTCs now. We are not doing this currently.

Projects at the RTCs

All the points made in the RTC impact assessment report from Aug 2024 are still valid. P

roject submissions are continuing to grow both in quality and quantity. Specific gaps in learning at all RTCs were spotted and addressed. For eg., most teachers did not use cloning, list variable, blocks etc. in Scratch a couple of years back. After focusing on these, most of the projects are now using these effectively. Similarly, after seeing some projects use motion path to good effect, most RTC project use these in the presentations.

In terms of quantity the project team sizes are continuing to fall. While we allow 3 students per team, it has now fallen to less than 1.7! Here is a graph of the team size over the terms. Note that terms 3 and 4 were a little anomalous as indicated earlier. The trend is in the downward direction.

In the previous report we had listed several things that students gain by participating in the Asha Impressions competitions: Recognition of Effort, Sense of Achievement, Healthy Competition, Skill Development, Public Speaking & Confidence, Feedback & Improvement, and Exposure to New Ideas. As the number of RTCs and the number of students in the RTCs are continuing to increase, these opportunities were being denied to most students. As described in the RTC operations section, we have started bringing together RTCs into a bigger function at the end of the term. Here are some testimonials regarding these functions.

Thomur RTC – Ms. Nithiyashri.S, Student, Grade 10

“I am Nithiyashri and studying std X at GHS Thomur. I had already completed Digital Literacy, Scratch, Physical Computing and Web development 1.0. I was very happy to be there in the event and I felt inspired by the other student’s projects. When I received the certificate from the chief guests for Web development 1.0. I felt very happy during the ceremony. For me, it was a day of happiness and joy. We were given transport facility to attend the function. It was a nice experience for me.”

Thomur RTC – Ms. Logeshwari.N, Student, Grade 9

“I am Logeshwari and studying std IX at GHS Thomur. We were given this opportunity to show our projects to the students of KKC and Tiruthani RTC. I got ideas for my running course and I was inspired by the ideas of the others. My project was selected from the showcase and it is “Seasons”. RajaRaman sir appreciated so much for the sensors usage in the project. My project was chosen to give a special prize during the certificate Distribution Event. I was happy and delighted for arranging the day for us. I enjoyed the day.”

Nalantinputhur RTC – Ms. L.Jananeeswari, Grade 9

“I was very happy to participate in this function. Another thing is that even though I was eager to go to Chennai for my project, I got another opportunity I was happy when I put my project on screen on stage. My mother also came with me and everyone praised me. More than how happy I was, my mother was very happy, and seeing that, I also became happy. All the teacher spoke well to me. Many people got opportunities just like me. I learned a lot from everyone’s projects. I was amazed to see projects like media editing, scratch, web development and digital literacy. My friends and their parents were all happy. Thank you for this opportunity.”

Impact of the RTCs

An independent impact assessment conducted by AuxoHub between Jan to March, 2025 covering 60 students, 9 teachers and 27 others including government school teachers, judges at the RTC events, etc. It highlighted over 90% pass rates, strong digital literacy gains, and improvements in Maths, English, and problem-solving. Children who had never had the opportunity to touch a computer now confidently write code, design projects to solve real-world challenges, and present their work with pride. You may read the complete report here or the summary presentation here.

Asha has been working hard to ensure RTCs continue to innovate and provide the best education for school children in technology in a cost effective manner. With support from IITM Pravartak and donors, we hope to continue that work.

You may view the album here.

Asha Chennai, in collaboration with IITM Pravartak, operates 13 Rural Technology Centres (RTCs) across four districts in Tamilnadu providing free computer education—ranging from foundational to advanced courses—for students from underserved communities. We inaugurated four new RTCs in 2025 at Thirupatchur, Tiruttani and Uttukotai at Thiruvallur and Kottur, Thiruvarur.

The RTCs currently offer basic courses like Digital Literacy, Scratch Programming, and advanced courses like Web development, Animation, Physical Computing, and Media Editing. New courses like Web development 2, Introduction to Robotics and Artificial Intelligence are in the pipeline. Asha volunteers and teachers are working towards developing a curriculum for these at present.

Asha’s RTCs operate in two academic terms each year: February to July and August to January. Each course is designed to span six months, comprising approximately 3.5 months of instruction followed by 1.5 months dedicated to project work.

At the end of each term, students are required to submit projects as part of their coursework. These projects are carefully evaluated by RTC teachers, Leads, and Asha volunteers. From this pool, a select few are invited to present their work at RTC Impressions—a showcase event held twice annually in late July and late January. RTC Impressions celebrates the most outstanding student projects, offering them a platform to be judged by an external panel and recognized for their creativity, rigor, and impact.

Project Submission

Asha hosted its 7^th RTC Impression at IITM Research Park, Taramani on 18 August, 2025. We received an impressive submission of over 400 student projects from 12 RTCs this term, reflecting months of dedicated learning and hands-on experimentation.

Below table provides the details of projects submitted and selected by each RTC. Since Uttukotai, Thirupatchur and Thiruttani are new RTCs, only basic Digital Literacy course in being offered there. As terms proceed, we expect students from these RTCs to compete in other courses too. Our Thomur RTC has been functional since July 2023. Most of the students at this RTC already learn digital literacy at their schools from our tecahers. Hence, at the RTC, they enroll directly into Scratch Programming.

The Event

To prepare for the RTC Impressions event, Asha’s team coordinated with the IITM Pravartak team to reserve the necessary venues and arrange food services. The Leelavathy Hall (mini auditorium) and the exhibition hall located opposite the main auditorium were booked for the event. Arrangements for lunch and snacks were also made to ensure participants and judges were well taken care of throughout the day.

The students and teachers from Thiruvallur, Thoothukudi and Villupuram arrived in their vans by 9 am and were escorted to the dining area for breakfast. After breakfast everyone gathered at the Leelavathy Hall to start the event. It was decided to conduct the Presentation and Scratch programming competition here; the other competitions were organized in the hall opposite.

The judges had arrived by then, and Mr. Rajaraman, Volunteer and Project coordinator at Asha, welcomed them and briefed the judges on the grading parameters. Generally, the grading for projects is divided in 30-30-40 pattern, where 30% weightage is assigned to the Project and presentation of it, while 40% is allocated to the Q&A session. The judges were handed over the scorecards and assigned their respective spots to grade the competitions.

The Competition

The digital literacy and Scratch programming competitions were held in the Leelavathy Hall. The students in the Presentation competition were given the stage as they needed to present their projects on a large screen. Scratch programming was held in the backend of the same hall where students presented to the judges.

The remaining competitions were assigned to two panels of judges. We arranged for the students to present their entries in the room opposite. Two tables were placed at either end of the room, where RTC teachers guided the students according to their scheduled slots.

The competitions commenced at 10:30 AM and ran until 12:30 PM, with a tea break at 11:00 AM. Lunch was served in the adjacent hall, following which the events resumed.

The digital literacy competition is always a delightful experience, especially with students presenting their projects on stage. Each child brings their own spark—some arrive with colorful charts; others surprise the audience with interactive games or clever puzzles. A few even weave in a song or dance, turning the session into a lively celebration of ideas and imagination.

The Q&A rounds are a treat in themselves. Judges engage the students with thoughtful questions—probing into the content, the creative choices behind animations, and the techniques used to bring their visions to life. What’s truly heartening is how confidently and playfully the children respond, often with a touch of humor that lights up the room. The judges, too, lean into the moment, indulging the occasional cheeky remark with warm smiles and gentle banter. Students presented on topics such as Isaikaruvigal, Yadhumanaval, Neer Melanmai, Story and Photosynthesis, Tamil Eluthukal, Plastic Eating Bacteria, Continents etc.

The Scratch Programming competition that was going on at the back of the room was also interesting. Students had selected interesting topics like Gender inequality, Fruit ninja & Basket Ball, Chhota Bheem, Object Drawing Using Shapes, Photosynthesis etc.

Since Animation is being offered only in Kanakammachatiram and Kannigaiper this term, we received a total of 12 project submission in this category out of which 2 were finalized for the final competition. The students from Kanakaammachtiram RTC showcased a project named Catching Game and Kannigaiper RTC students presented project named CS Students. In Media Editing, students presented topics such as Namma Ooru Thiruvila, Social Media, Village Sports, Gender equality, Ostrich etc.

As there were fewer entries in the Media Editing and Animation categories, the judges were able to deliberate and finalize the winners by 3:00 PM. Unfortunately, Mr. Sridhar and Mr. Shankar could not stay for the prize distribution ceremony. As a gesture of appreciation, our students had prepared handmade gifts for the judges, which were presented to them before their departure.

The judges for the Web Development and Physical Computing competitions evaluated a total of 13 projects across both categories. Students showcased their ideas with enthusiasm and confidence, with some using props to enhance their presentations. To assess the depth of understanding, judges asked a few participants to make specific changes to their projects. The students responded effectively, implementing the changes and articulating their grasp of the concepts with clarity.

While other competitions got done early, digital literacy finished by 4 PM after which the judges took time to deliberate on the winners. The final list was handed over to Mr. Rajaraman after which we proceeded to the prize distribution ceremony.

Prize Distribution

Our chief guest for the evening was Mr. Shankar Raman, CEO IIT- Madras Pravartak Technologies Foundation. After welcoming everyone at the event, Mr. Rajaram proceeded to talk to the students about RTCs, the value of project work at RTCs and the improvements seen over the years. He also congratulated the students on picking topics related to climate change and sustainability as suggested by Mr. Kamakoti at the RTC Impressions held last term.

Mr. Shankar Raman also took the stage to address the students, congratulating them on their impressive projects and contributions to the event. He urged them to pursue careers aligned with their personal interests and passions, rather than simply following popular or trending paths. Highlighting the growing shortage of professionals such as historians, geologists, archaeologists, and linguists in the country, he emphasized the importance of choosing vocations that resonate with one’s curiosity and calling—rather than yielding to societal or peer pressure.

The judges were then invited to talk about their experiences and announce the winners. Mr. Shankar Raman gave away prizes to the winners.

Digital Literacy –

1st prize – RTC Kilpennathur for project Story and Photosynthesis

2nd and 3rd prize – RTC Periyapalayam – Place Value and Yadhumanaval

Another 3rd prize was awarded to RTC Kannigaiper – Junk Food

Scratch Programming –

1st Prize was awarded to RTC Kannigaipair- S Series

2nd Prize to RTC Nalatinputthur- 3 Games

3rd Prize to RTC Seethanjeri- Maths game

Web Development-

1st Prize to RTC Thomur-Good health and well being

2nd Prize to RTC Kanakamma Chathiram- Museum

Animation

1st Prize to Kanakamma Chathiram- Catching Game

Physical Computing

1st Prize to RTC Periyapalayam -Alexa, Is my plant sad?

2nd Prize to RTC Kanakamma Chathiram – Trucking app

Media Editing

1st Prize to RTC Nalatinputthur -Namma Ooru Thiruvizha

2nd Prize RTC Kanakamma Chathiram -Village Sports

Testimonials

Mr. Arjun Shankar, (Former) Chief Corporate Management Services Officer at NIIT Limited- “Asha for Education – is doing a phenomenal job in education, helping improving education quality and access to computers in a very thoughtful way for government school children. Teacher training and pedagogy has also played a big part in ensuring progress and excellence. The volunteers and Asha team are all truly committed. Glad Asha is scaling well with quality. Happy to support the efforts of my classmate Rajaraman Krishnan who is full-on on this for so many years.”

Mr. Austin Mathew Jacob, Cybersecurity Enthusiast at Crossbow Cybersecurity- “It was an honor to be part of this event as a judge. I was truly impressed by the caliber and potential of the students. My sincere thanks to Crossbow Cybersecurity for providing me with this opportunity and my appreciation to Asha Chennai for their commendable initiatives. The effort to extend computer education to children from villages in Tamil Nadu is both inspiring and impactful.”

An independent assessment by AuxoHub reveals how Asha’s ACE program is reshaping rural classrooms through technology.

Asha Chennai’s ACE (Asha Computer Education) program is revolutionizing rural education across Tamil Nadu. Once hesitant, government school teachers now confidently teach computer science—77% report increased self-belief and 84% use digital tools beyond the subject.

For students, ACE is a weekly highlight, building skills in typing, presentations, multimedia, teamwork, and problem-solving. Parents feel renewed pride, teachers gain recognition, and communities begin to dream bigger.

Implemented in 105 schools with a 100% completion rate, ACE proves that teacher-led digital change is possible—even in resource-constrained settings. We hope this serves as a model for any broader introduction of Computer Science education in government schools. As one teacher shared, “This is the first time I feel we are not being left behind.”

AuxoHub conducted an independent impact assessment study of the ACE program between Jan to March, 2025 covering 30 government school teachers, 5 Asha trainers, 10 school administrators, 40 students and 10 parents. You may read the complete report here.

Independent Assessment Report by Auxohub on Asha run Rural Technology Centres.

Asha Chennai, in collaboration with ‍IITM Pravartak Technologies Foundation has established 13 Rural Technology Centres (RTCs) across Thiruvallur, Thoothukudi, Tiruvannamalai, and Thiruvarur districts, providing marginalized students with hands-on, project-based computer science education. The centres offer a wide spectrum of courses—ranging from digital literacy and introductory programming to advanced subjects like web development and robotics—all free of cost.
An independent impact assessment conducted by AuxoHu between Jan to March, 2025 covering 60 students, 9 teachers and 27 others including government school teachers, judges at the RTC events, etc. It highlighted over 90% pass rates, strong digital literacy gains, and improvements in Maths, English, and problem-solving. Children who had never had the opportunity to touch a computer now confidently write code, design projects to solve real-world challenges, and present their work with pride. You may read the complete report here.

RightStart 2025

Rightstart is Asha’s annual teacher training program, bringing together educators from all our locations for a five-day event at IIT Madras. It’s a chance for teachers to learn, grow, and connect while participating in engaging training sessions. For new teachers, it’s an introduction to the larger Asha family and an opportunity to build meaningful bonds. The event concludes with a lively closing-day celebration, making it a memorable experience for everyone.

You may view the photos here.

Organizing

Asha has been holding this event at IIT Madras almost every year since its inception in 2003! IIT Madras granted us the permission to hold it in their campus this year as well. With more than 150 teachers and staff attending the event, many travel from locations outside Chennai. This necessitates the use of hostels for the teachers and staff to stay over. Since the students were vacating the hostels only by 19 May, we planned for the event to be held from 22-26 May, 2025.

We booked for the teachers to stay at the student hostels, men at the Krishna hostel and women at the Swarnamukhi hostel. Breakfast and dinner were organized at the IIT mess and lunch for all was organized at the training hall. This year 127 women and 19 men stayed back at the hostels. Other teachers and staff travelled to and from their respective locations during the period.

Like the last few years, the sessions themselves were conducted at the Vanavani school auditorium inside the IITM campus. Here is the list of sessions that were scheduled for the 5-day event:

Day 1 & 2 – Math Session by Ms. Meena Suresh and Ms. Kalavathi

Ms. Meena Suresh has been training Asha teachers for several years, making a significant impact on their development. She has been an integral part of our Rightstart events since 2014, earning the trust and appreciation of our teachers. Her engaging training sessions have fostered a strong rapport with our teachers, who find her methods both effective and approachable. Due to the success of her training techniques, she remains a valued and regular presence at Asha trainings.

The two-day session by Meena Mam focused on key mathematical concepts and effective teaching methodologies. The training covered fundamental topics such as shapes, numbers, place value, and the four basic operations. Teachers were guided through common mistakes teachers typically make while teaching these topics and strategies to address them effectively.

Additionally, the sessions delved into upper primary-level topics, including fractions, the Pythagorean theorem, LCM and HCF, as well as rational and irrational numbers. Through interactive discussions and problem-solving exercises, participants gained valuable insights into making math more engaging and accessible for students.

The training equipped teachers with practical approaches to enhance their teaching, ensuring a stronger understanding of mathematical concepts among learners.

Day 3 – Science session by Ms. Purva Bhatter

Ms. Purva has been a dedicated trainer with a long-standing association with Asha teachers. She has traveled to our projects in Thoothukudi, actively contributing to the training and development of Asha teachers.

A 1.5-day training session, engaging teachers in hands-on science experiments and interactive learning was conducted by Ms. Purva. The session began with ten experiments, including studies on pendulum mass and length, as well as measuring leaf length using a Vernier caliper with each group consisting of five members. Participants carefully observed each experiment and documented their findings.

In the afternoon, teachers were assigned a task to create a project in Scratch based on the experiments. Group sizes were adjusted, with a maximum of eight members per team. The next morning, teachers presented their projects, and all participants took part in evaluating them. At the end of the session, three outstanding projects were recognized and awarded prizes.

Day 4 – Stress Management by Ms. Manimegalai

Ms. Manimegalai conducted an engaging stress management session, beginning with fun activities to set a positive tone. She introduced the concept of stress, its impact, and effective ways to manage it, ensuring interactive participation from the teachers.

During the session, she explained different types of stress and various techniques for relieving it. To make the learning experience practical, she introduced a newspaper activity designed to help release stress. She also played music and guided participants to follow movements from a video, creating an enjoyable and relaxing environment.

The session provided teachers with valuable tools to manage stress effectively, both in their personal lives and classrooms.

Day 5 – Karadipath by Ms. Preetika Venkatakrishnan

The Karadi Path team, consisting of six members—Mr. Arokiya Selvaraj, Ms. Aswini, Ms. Prithika,Mr. Siddharth, Mr. Poovarasan, and Mr. Dhilipan—conducted an engaging and interactive training session for teachers.

Ms. Preetika Venkatakrishnan ,COO & Head of Innovation at Karadi Path Education Company led the session, beginning with fun tongue twisters to help teachers improve articulation and pronunciation. Mr. Siddharth then introduced an open-ended story through mime, encouraging teachers to explore multiple possible endings. This exercise was aimed at developing creativity and storytelling skills.

The session concluded with a lively Music Path activity, where Ms. Prithika guided all the teachers through an immersive experience. Additionally, the Karadi Path team shared valuable insights on using imagination in storytelling to enhance student engagement.

Day 5 – Closing Ceremony

The valedictory ceremony at the end of Rightstart is a showcase of talent, where teachers take the stage to sing, dance, and act with enthusiasm. Having prepared for weeks, they seize this opportunity to unwind, celebrate, and express their creativity.

Beyond the performances, the closing ceremony holds special significance for Asha, as it honors teachers and staff who have dedicated five or more years to the organization. Long service awards are presented to employees who have reached milestones of 5, 10, 15, and 20 years, recognizing their invaluable contributions.

This year, two staff members marked 20 years with Asha, one celebrated 15 years, three completed 10 years, and 19 reached the five-year milestone. Their dedication fills us with immense pride, and we are grateful to have such committed individuals as part of our team.

Beyond the Training

After a day of engaging training sessions, our teachers took some time in the evenings to explore the local sights. They visited serene beaches and the Velankani church, enjoying moments of relaxation and fun.

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