Bridges to the Future Initiative, India

The Bridges to the Future Initiative, India project continues UPIASI’s activities in the area of information technology and development. UPIASI has been awarded a subcontract to administer the research component of the project by the International Literacy Institute (ILI) of the University of Pennsylvania. Daniel A. Wagner, director of the ILI and a professor at Penn's Graduate School of Education, directs the project. UPIASI has appointed Professor C. J. Daswani, formerly professor of linguistics, Jawaharlal Nehru University and later of the National Council on Educational Research and Training, as the national coordinator.

Bridges to the Future, India, examines literacy and innovation in India. It is designed to fill a crucial gap in our knowledge of how literacy education programs work in developing countries, and what consequences – social, economic, educational, and political – may be expected as a function of participation and individual background characteristics. The research gathers both qualitative and quantitative data in addition to mapping the role that new technologies will provide in India. As part of this research, the ILI, UPIASI and other partners will be helping to foster new methods of educational programming, including new and innovative uses of information and communication technologies for literacy and basic education in local languages. These uses will become part of the research design of the project, being implemented in eighteen schools in Andhra Pradesh.

After a year of preparatory work, the project was inaugurated on October 10, 2003, in Hyderabad, by the Minister of Education of Andhra Pradesh, M. Venkateswara Rao. It has been making steady progress since then over 2004 and 2005. An agreement has been signed with The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad to develop educational software for implementation in a pilot project on eighteen schools in Andhra Pradesh in cooperation with the Andhra Pradesh Department of Education to research the use of IT in literacy and primary education.