Education Minister Pefkios Georgiades is frustrated. He has CYP 70 mln to spend on information and computer technology (ICT) in 500 schools, but no one to turn to.
He gets frustrated even more when bogus or amateur consultants approach the government “to solve all problems”, costing the state twice as much to repair the first tenderer’s mess.
Enter Virtual IT and a pilot project at the English School in cooperation with the University of Cyprus, CYTA and Microsoft.
Minister Georgiades and his Director General, Olympia Stylianou, were on hand at the English School’s multi-million pound Science Centre last week to witness the first demonstration of the eLearning project.
In theory, at least, this pilot project aims to connect all students and teachers, and eventually the school’s administration and even parents, in a virtual environment where the day’s lessons can be taught using tools that will make learning an efficient and enjoyable exercise.
Antonis Hadjioannou of Virtual IT said that a survey found that all students at the school had PCs at home, while 60% of them had ADSL lines, allowing for speedy downloads of images and, supposedly, homework.
Seeing a video demo of how Microsoft is developing eLearning at university level in the U.S., with greater interaction and transfer of knowledge, the Minister still needed some convincing. He wanted to see the pilot project put into practice.
Harout Boyiadjian, head of the Geography Dept., demonstrated in practical terms what online and offline resources he now uses, cutting down teaching time for a subject from several weeks to just a few days. At the same time, students are producing work and assignments more efficiently, some examples of which caught the Minister’s attention.
“We have gained invaluable time to teach them more,” Boyiadjian said, adding that from the various workshops he has attended only 2.5% of the teachers have the potential to leap into new technology and tools, while a good 15% will faithfully follow the new trend.
This, it seems, is the biggest obstacle that needs to be overcome in public schooling in order to convince all teachers that their jobs are not threatened and that their time will be managed more efficiently. If they want to, that is…
