Unable to launch
Kaieteur News – Yesterday, the Ministry of Education launched the first “smart classroom” in Region Three, with the promise of Education Minister Priya Manickchand to continue expanding such facilities throughout the predominantly rural region and across the country as a whole. A statement from the Ministry reads in part:
“Minister Manickchand said teachers would be trained to use the facility. He said that there had been many initiatives to incorporate Information Technology (IT) into the classroom, but many of those projects had not been taken seriously enough to put the education sector in a position to provide online education when the COVID pandemic struck- 19.
However, he praised those teachers who rose to the challenge during the pandemic and managed to teach their students more or less. He said the COVID-19 pandemic had caused the Ministry of Education to re-group and ensure that systems were put in place to maximize the engagement of children during this time. ”
Implicit in the Minister’s statement, of course, is some self-criticism as this is her second phase in her current portfolio and therefore any failure, between 2011 and 2015, to put the education sector in a position to deliver online education seriously . , it was. That said, the supremacy of responsibility for failure rests firmly on the ministers of the Granger administration, who happens to be her successors and her predecessors, considering the global revolution in communications technology, the growth and expansion of big data and their role. in the field of education delivery, it reached the critical maturity point during the past five years.
Essentially, in terms of integrating information technology into the education sector at a time of peak opportunity, what happened in Granger’s administration was a lot of pomp and ceremony launches, but a fundamental failure to launch. This is because of the theatricality, when there was a recent spat between Minister Manickchand and former Ministers Nicolette Henry (Education) and Cathy Hughes (Communications), when they were challenged by Manickchand to produce evidence of smart classroom working, as alleged they were launched. under the Coalition’s tenure, nothing could be produced, with both former Ministers relying on news reports of the launches of such facilities and not the assessment reports of those facilities in action.
Internet access and the availability of the basic tools necessary for this new pedagogy will be a defining factor in bridging the increasingly huge socio-economic and developmental gaps between urban and rural communities.
To be clear, the challenges of integrating technology into an analog classroom and bridging the digital divide are not easy to overcome, not even for rich countries, and the COVID-19 pandemic has fixed inadequacy technological, educational and economic. infrastructure of the world over.
For example, according to a report on the US National Public Radio website:
“Across the country as American schools struggle to reopen or remain virtual, many rural areas are worried that their students will fall even behind their city peers. This pandemic has shone a light on many inequalities. The federal government estimates that more than a third of the American countryside has little or no Internet. In several recent interviews, educators have told NPR that they are concerned that the rural-urban divide will only get worse if children can go online to learn. “
What this shows is that even in the economic powerhouse, that is, the United States, which is currently in global competition with China to create cutting-edge 5G technology, much of America’s rural heartland basically exists in a different, older age.
It is therefore not enough that the idea of information communication technology is integrated into the education system as a reactive response to the challenges to providing education that COVID brings. Other complex considerations must be considered, not the least of which is the availability and affordability of broadband internet necessary to bring the smart classroom equipment to life.
One bright note coming out of the launch yesterday, is Minister Manickchand’s statement that one use of the smart classroom technology would be the remote sharing of specialist skills between teachers involved in different schools. This shows that, at least within the leadership of the education sector, we are moving beyond the visionary launches that are just spitting and exist for progress political theater only and not moving forward itself.
That said, the conversation and conceptual development that follows must be much broader as even America finds it, with US President Joe Biden recently announcing an executive order is aimed primarily at improving and expanding the country’s ICT infrastructure in a more stable, inclusive, fairer way. Unless ubiquitous, universal ICT is considered here in Guyana as fundamental and integral to the overall national development process, we will continue down the path to what could in the long run be a final failure fatal to launch.