Schoolteachers even in the remote areas of the country now develop classroom contents for their students with the help of textbooks, websites and YouTube videos. Not only that, they also share the contents by signing up into blogs, said Md Mofakkharul Islam, a system analyst of the education ministry.
He was giving a description of a ‘multimedia classroom,’ an ambitious programme undertaken by the education ministry.
So far the ministry has provided training to 405 teachers, while the target is to train 20,500, both in schools and madrasas (religious educational institutions) across the country.
However, there are criticisms against the initiative as content development in the urban areas would be far better than that in the countryside.
A demo of the multimedia classroom was given at the Digital Innovation Fair 2011 at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Novo Theatre, co-organised by the science and ICT ministry and Access to Information (A2I) project of the Prime Minister’s Office.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina opened the three-day show yesterday.
Not only the multimedia classroom, the recently launched e-book — an online textbook for school students — by the education ministry also came to the limelight at the exposition.
People who got their secondary and higher secondary certificates after 1995 can log onto www.educationboard.gov.bd to see their results in the HSC and SSC exams along with other details.
The ‘electronic student information system’ was one of the many digitalisation initiatives of the government that was exhibited at the show.
A total of 86 public and private organisations, including all ministries and departments, are showcasing their services and initiatives at the fair.
Anir Chowdhury, policy adviser of the A2I project, said the event mainly aims to showcase the services of the government, adding that public entities have little scope to show off.
Once the postal department of the government was about to go into oblivion, but it was revived with digitally equipped developments, such as electronic money transfer service (EMTS), as shown in the fair.
In no time, one can send money anywhere within the country through 1,750 post offices with the help of EMTS, which was previously known as Money Order.
The government also displayed its post office debit card service yesterday. The Prime Minister became a client of the service.
Dutch-Bangla Bank Limited, which also participated in the fair, launched mobile banking in May this year, enabling customers to send money through mobile phone. The government’s postal department will also launch the service soon.
Already 7,000 clients of the bank have been registered for the service in six districts including Dhaka.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) got a huge response when it launched online tax return submission, said Md Mahfuzul Alam, project manager of Technovista, the technical support entity of the NBR.
Electronic voting machine is another example of digitisation, which is gradually eliminating the use of paper from electoral activities, said an official of the Election Commission.
-With The Daily Star input
