Thaindian News

Thiruvananthapuram, July 21 (IANS) Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster, Tuesday signed an agreement with the Kerala government to telecast educational programmes for school children in the state.
Under the agreement, educational television programmes from Deutsche Welle will be beamed on VICTERS (Virtual Class Technology on Edusat for Rural Schools), the educational television channel of the Kerala government’s department of education, operated by the state’s IT@School Project.

The project was inaugurated by minister for education and culture M.A. Baby here in the presence of Friedrich Rahn, Germany’s deputy consul general, and Angelika Newel, Deutsche Welle’s head of distribution for Asia and Australia.

The programmes to be telecast include the popular educational programme in Germany “Mouse TV”, as well as other documentaries and videos covering science, medicine, waste management, workplace safety, water, world cultures and animal kingdom.

“The government is committed to use all types of the modern media for providing quality education in the state and this initiative to give high quality content of Deutsche Welle through IT@School ViCTERS will ensure internationally acceptable quality content for the five-million student community in the state”, said Baby.

Added Newel: “This new partnership offers us a great platform to reach out to students at schools in India. We are confident that our brand of edutainment will be a hit with both students and teachers.”

ViCTERS is country’s first dedicated educational channel based on EDUSAT, a satellite built exclusively for serving India’s educational sector, and was inaugurated in 2005 by then president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

Kerala was the first state to make use of EDUSAT for broadcasting educational programmes to nearly 15,000 schools in 14 districts. Operational since 2007, ViCTERS is telecast 17 hours a day.

“This association between Deutsche Welle and ViCTERS will provide students with the opportunity to see and understand advanced educational video content of international standards, thus enabling them to think beyond the box to analyse what they learn at school,” said IT@School-ViCTERS executive director Anvar Sadath.