NIOS and CISCO to launch ICT based Vocational curriculum

CISCO has partnered with the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) to introduce the ICT curriculum in six selected Accredited Vocational Institutes (AVIs). Delivering the IT Essentails, these institutes are to work as a part of Cisco Local Academy, providing with PC hardware and networking information technology course to around 100 students each year as a part of their offerings. The course prepares students for networking and IT-related careers in the public and private sectors, as well as for higher education in engineering, computer science and related fields.

The selected AVIs are located at Ambala, Bhopal, Balangir (Orissa), Delhi, Mumbai and Shillong and several more NIOS AVI's are envisaged to start this course. Cisco has imparted training to nine instructors from the above AVIs on IT Essentials: PC Hardware and Software at the Centre for Electronic Governance, Jaipur from January 18-23, 2010. As a part of this initiative, Cisco will provide its free web based curriculum, online course material of the Networking Academy and 24x7 technical support to the institutes. IT essential courses, to be provided by NIOS, target the students in upper secondary schools, technical and vocational schools, who want to pursue careers in IT and gain working knowledge of how computers work, how to assemble computers, and how to troubleshoot hardware and software issues.