A Vibrant Showcase of Creativity and Tech Skills, with 51 Teams Competing Across Digital Literacy, Coding, Media, and more.

RTC Impressions – February 2025

IIMT Pravartak in partnership with Asha Chennai had been running nine active Rural Technology Centers (RTCs) in Tamilnadu-

RTCs or Rural Technology Centers are independent computer centers run by Asha Chennai where students from government schools come to learn computer courses for free. This is in addition to classes conducted by Asha under the SPRINT, Explore and ACE programs. Asha has opened three new RTCs in Thirupatchur, Thiruttani and Uttukotai in time for the new term starting in Feb 2025.

The RTCs offer a range of courses including Digital Literacy, Scratch Programming, Web Development, Animation, Media Editing, AI, and Robotics. Students enrolled at the RTCs select the course they wish to pursue and spend six months learning and practicing the subject. At the end of the course, they are required to apply their learning by completing a project. Due to ongoing constraints with the availability of laptops, students typically submit their projects individually or in small groups of two to three.

Projects submitted from all the RTCs are first evaluated by the RTC Lead and teachers, who carry out an initial round of selection. The shortlisted projects are then reviewed by Asha volunteers, who identify the outstanding entries. These selected projects are given the opportunity to be showcased at RTC Impressions, where students present them to an external panel of judges. Students take great pride in submitting high-quality projects, as being selected and recognized at RTC Impressions is seen as a significant achievement.

ORGANIZING THE EVENT

The RTC Impressions was hosted at the Raman Hall in IITM Research Park at Taramani on 13 February, 2025. Pravartak helped organize the event.

We decided to hold the Presentation competition in the Raman Hall. We organized a space for the Web Development and media Editing completion judges at the back of the auditorium.

Scratch Programming and Physical Computing were held in a hall opposite.

Ms. KIM DOYEON FROM AND OTHER INVITEES AT THE EVENT

For this edition of RTC Impressions, we were honoured to welcome a special guest from Code.org — Ms. Kim Doyeon, the Business Development Head for the APAC region at Code.org — who graciously accepted our invitation to attend the event. Code.org is a nonprofit dedicated to the vision that every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer science. It has developed the most widely used computer science curriculum in the United States.

We are also proud to share that Asha Chennai has been selected as the Regional Director for Code.org in India. At Asha, we have integrated several of Code.org’s activities into our primary and middle school curriculum, and we are also using many of their courses directly as part of the advanced computer science programs at our Rural Technology Centers.

The teachers and students were thrilled to have Ms. Doyeon at the event. She spent her time observing the students present their projects and also took time to speak with them.

Several other invitees also attended our RTC Impressions this year. Ms. Archana Hari who was a part of the quality initiatives support unit of administration that worked with school education and ADTW department came to see the children’s competition and participate in the prize distribution function. Ms. Janaa from the Namma School Namma Ooru Palli came and interacted with the children. Ms. Madhumitha and Ms. Jahnavi from Auxohub who are doing an Impact Assessment study on the RTCs attended the whole day and used the opportunity to also conduct some interviews with the students, teachers and judges as part of their study! We had also invited teachers from our ACE schools to the program to get a first hand look at the Impressions event so that they can also prepare for their own ACE Impressions which is coming up shortly. Teachers from Thiruvallur and Villupuram/Thiruvannamalai came to see the RTC Impressions. Two guests from Rotary Utsav also visited the event.

All the visitors were thoroughly impressed by what they saw in terms of the children’s projects.

COMPETITONS

This term, the students from all the RTCs have collectively submitted 329 projects!

Out of these, 51 teams were selected to showcase their project at the RTC Impressions.

Since all participating teams came from outside Chennai, the students undertook considerable journeys to attend the event. Teams from Thiruvallur and Thiruvanamalai began their travel early in the morning, while the team from Thoothukudi made an overnight journey to reach the city.

We had organized breakfast for all the teachers and students at the IITM Research Park. Once breakfast was done, and the judges had arrived, the event started at 9.30 am.

Mr. Rajaraman, Asha Volunteer and coordinator, briefed the judges on the grading parameters. The competitions are graded on the creativity and content of project, presentation of the project to judges and Q&A. The final Q&A holds the higherst weightage of 40%.

The competitions began by 9.45 am and went on till 1 pm, when the we broke for lunch. The digital literacy competition involved students showcasing presentations developed using OpenOffice Impress. The students use variety of features like slide designs and animation, various customizations, transitions etc. The topics of the presentations varied from Fabrics, Games, Story time, Open Office, solar system and even karate, where the student dressed in his karate uniform and performed some stunts!! The creativity and innovation displayed by the students was amazing!!

The students used images and videos they had shot themselves to embed them in the presentations adding personal touch to them.

The competitions for the other courses were also going on in parallel. Several interesting games and other apps were presented in all the competitions ranging from the quirky to the socially relevant. Students showcased their attempt at making a detective movie and a time travel movie in media editing, a school bus app which enhances the safety of the students in the physical computing course in addition to several enjoyable games!

The students also spent their time showcasing their projects to the other invitees of the RTC Impressions – Asha volunteers and staff, Crossbow team, Auxohub team, Government teachers and government officials.

We broke for lunch around 1 PM, after which the competitions resumed. All presentations concluded by 4:30 PM, following which the judges took a short break to deliberate and finalize the winners. The list of winners was then handed over to Mr. Rajaraman, marking the beginning of the prize distribution ceremony.

PRIZE DISTRIBUTION

The prize distribution ceremony began by 5 PM, with Asha inviting Ms. Kim Doyeon on stage along with Ms Archana Hari, Mr. Arjun Shankar, Mr. Raja Chidambaram and Mr. Rajaraman. Mr. Rajaraman spoke to the students about their performance in the RTC Impressions, after which Ms. Kim Doyeon spoke about her visit to India and her participation in the event.

This year we had three students- Srivarshan.A, Sudharsan.A and G. Pooja– who successfully completed six terms at Asha’s RTC. As a token of our appreciation for their continued association and commitment to learning at the RTC, Asha Chennai presented them with a special gift.

Ms. Archana Hari spoke to the students about the event and appreciated the quality of work put in by the students. Mr. Arjun Shankar, judge of the Digital Literacy competition, declared the winners for the competition.

Our Chief Guest, Mr. Kamakoti, Director of IIT Madras, also joined us and addressed the students. He praised Mr. Rajaraman for his 20 years of selfless service towards the welfare of government school children and invited everyone to give him a standing ovation in recognition of his contributions.

Mr. Kamakoti spoke to the gathering about IITM Pravartak and Asha Chennai efforts in creating the RTCs and providing a platform for students to learn computer science for free. He urged the students to use their skills in tackling real life social issues, agricultural problems etc by trying out new ideas using technology.

Mr. Saravanan, a Government teacher from Villupuram who was also once an Asha teacher also took stage to speak about Asha efforts and initiatives for the schools all over Tamilnadu. He praised Asha for our work in CS education, setting up libraries and RTCs in the underserved rural areas.

The judges were then invited on stage to announce the winners amidst anticipation and cheer. The judges lauded the quality of work done by students and expressed their difficulty in choosing a single winner. The winning teams were awarded a certificate, medal and gift.

All the judges and guests were given a token of appreciation from Asha, after which we wrapped the session. Here is the list of winners of the RTC Impressions-

Below is the list of winners-

MEDIA COVERAGE

We received good coverage for the RTC Impressions held this time. Check out the coverage here:

Times Now- https://www.timesnownews.com/…/iit-madras-pravartak-and…

Business Minutes – https://www.businessminutes.in/…/iitm-pravartak-asha…

DT Next – https://www.dtnext.in/…/iitm-pravartak-provides…

UNI – https://www.uniindia.com/…/rur…/States/news/3393493.html

Dinamalar – https://www.dinamalar.com/…/-pravartak–asha-for…/54153

Skill Outlook – https://skilloutlook.com/…/iitm-pravartak-asha-for…

Edu Advice – https://eduadvice.in/educational-news…/iitm-pravartak/7985

Shiksha – https://www.shiksha.com/…/engineering-iit-madras…

Infodea – https://infodea.in/…/iitm-pravartak-asha-for-education…/

The Times of India

Times Now

Business Minute

DT Next

Rajasthan Patrika

TESTIMONIALS

Having experienced the competition spending the whole day in seeing the event, Ms. Doyeon Kim, Head of Global Partnerships at Code.org, said “I was truly inspired by the creativity, problem-solving, and presentation skills of all students. Their diverse projects, covering topics from Indian culture to community applications, highlighted them as creators of technology, not just consumers. The quality and innovation in their work were remarkable.”

About the event Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director of IIT Madras, said

“Our expectation from the RTCs was to provide a platform for students to have opportunity for innovation and out of box thinking. There are many social problems, requirements in agriculture, which can be overcome by trying out new ideas and we wanted to facilitate this for rural children through the RTCs.”

Industry leaders and people from academia who judged the competition had this to say about the event.

Mr. Raja Chidambaran, Sr. Technical Architect at CISCO, Adjunct faculty at BITS Pilani for last 10 years and Judge at RTC Impressions –

“I have been a judge at RTC Impressions by IITM Pravartak for the last 5 or 6 times. I also visit other colleges, private institutions for their PhD programs, symposiums and their final project presentations. Where I see RTCs stand out is, where RTCs give students a 360-degree experience. The students are able to deliver their technical knowledge in the form of the story or a game or programming which integrates all their knowledge and creativity. This is a completely different approach. The students are encouraged to come up with their own ideas rather than to copy from elsewhere. The concepts they come up with are their own, which is a huge plus which will benefit them in the future. This is a seed that will give us entrepreneurs and startups in the future. With respect to the implementation projects, I see that the RTC focuses on the primary skills which is understanding, implementing and delivering, which is unlike any commercial course available outside. The projects and apps which the student create are with focus on benefitting the society, which is not the direction which private institutes focus on. RTC has a great future and much needed for all rural kids.”

Ms Kumari Annamalai, the lead teachers who oversees the program said, “When RTC Impressions was held the first time, it was the first opportunity for the children to step out of their villages. Since the first batch, the children have come a long way with their abilities with computers. Through the RTCs, not just the students have learnt, we the teachers have also had an opportunity to learn computers since Asha follows the Teach as your Learn model. With every RTC Impressions, the quality of the projects has been getting better and better and we have reached the 6^th RTC Impressions now. “

The teachers who are running these various RTC centres had this to say about the event.

Mrs. Poonkodi Bhaskar (Periyapalayam RTC Teacher) “In the earlier events, when we were told that our students would be performing at IIT in front of external judges, both students and teachers would be nervous and excited. But, after the first time, the children have only been more and more excited. They have spread the word about how exciting it was to travel to Chennai, see the IIT campus and see big buildings there. When we go to the schools now, the children already know about our RTC programs and are thrilled to join us.”

Students who were participating in this event had this to say.

Ms. Ibin Fathima (Student at Kayathar RTC) – “Earlier, I only knew how to play games in the laptop, but once I have come to the RTC, I have learnt how to use a program and create projects. This has happened in a span of just 6 months and I find it amazing. Coming to IIT and presenting in front of so many students and judges has helped build my confidence and removed stage fear. Our teachers have brought us here safely and have been taking such good care of us and everyone has worked together to highlight the talent of kids from the villages. I am very happy to be here today!”