On Tuesday the Guyana Ministry of Education launched its online learning platform for education delivery as the worldwide learning landscape continues to change with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The initiative, which carries a cost of approximately $ 174 million, is being undertaken in collaboration with UNICEF’s Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and the United Kingdom (UK) International Tablet Academy.
The COVID-19 Accelerated Funding Project seeks to provide the hardware and infrastructure to support education by building capacity that will enable educators to deliver quality education, inputs and experiences that are compatible with modern modes of delivery.
This project seeks to allow for the provision of an integrated online platform for teachers, primarily for curriculum delivery, but with many other capabilities and applications. At the launch, which was broadly streamed on the Ministry of Education’s Facebook page, Education Minister Priya Manickchand noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a catalyst for expansion and improvement in Guyana education as it brings the importance of technology into the classroom class.
At the same time, he said, it also revealed how ready Guyana was to handle that method of teaching.
“COVID-19 struck us, as an extremely harsh world and the shock caused to the various education systems around the world has been recorded.
“The fact [was] we were not prepared for the kind of school where we would have to provide education with most of our children, all our children in some countries, outside the classroom, in their living room and with teachers outside the classroom and their living rooms. ”
Nevertheless, Manickchand did convey that Guyana has been coping well, which is evident when launching this platform. Restructuring the education system to suit a more tech-savvy population, the Education Minister said a serious problem had been revealed – many students did not have appropriate access to services or devices of interest to suit this approach to education .
“We had to look at what we already had such as technological infrastructure, computers, the internet, smart classrooms, classrooms… we had a serious lack of internet connectivity, with bandwidth that would allow teaching and receiving nationwide that severely hindered students. ”
For that very reason, the government, through its ministry, launched the smart classroom initiative, equipping schools across the country with the technology needed for online learning.
Also speaking at the launch was Professor Steve Molyneux, Chairman and Co-Founder of Tablet Academy International.
In his remarks, he noted that the pandemic, though devastating, presents a silver lining, forcing educators around the world to generate new ideas and innovative ways of providing education to meet the needs of the new learner population.
“With the focus again, on technology, we will develop soft skills, the committee with sharp focus, soft skills on collaboration, communication and teamwork. Being able to work remotely, there will be a high demand for personalized learning and so the role of the teacher will be enhanced.
“Technology creates and gives us that opportunity to reinvent and redesign education and teaching and learning specifically, based on the needs of all pupils,” said Molyneux.
The initial phase will target 1,000 Grade Seven teachers and their students in the four core subject areas. The presentation will involve training 16 Master Teachers on the platform, who will then train and support other teachers in a cascading model.
Those educators will receive laptops with the accompanying software, Microsoft Office 365 with access to all productivity software, including word Excel, Powerpoint Note, Outlook and OneDrive.
In addition, the solution will allow the Ministry of Education to send security policies to students and teachers to determine what types of interactions security is allowed first, even in the online environment.