Providing technological devices to classrooms might not bring any benefit if the teachers are not properly trained on using ICT (Information and Communications Technology) at classrooms and the study contents are not developed accordingly, discussants said at a seminar yesterday.
They said teaching practices in the country can be improved by a large scale through using ICT in classrooms and properly training the teachers to make idea of “digital classroom” a success, they said at the seminar on “Education, Technology and Women.”
British Council and English in Action jointly organised the two-day long seminar at the Bangabandhu International Conference Center in the capital that will end today.
Tom Power from Open University, UK, gave example of Myanmar where schools have ICT devices but progress is little.
Rokhsana Hossain from Save the Children shared the organisation’s experience on running a digital classroom project and said they had found that providing technological devices will bring no change if teachers were not properly trained about digital content.
Ananya Raihan, executive director of D Net, said collaboration between the public and the private sector was necessary for making classrooms digital.
Sharmistha Das, an adviser of English in Action, said there should be a coordination among the many programmes that are currently being run on using ICT in education.
In his keynote speech, Anir Chowdhury, policy advisor (Access to Information Programmme) to the Prime Minister’s Office, said the government was working on providing proper trainings to teachers on digital content.
Anir said they had plans to involve the electronic media, particularly the Sangshad Television, in this regard.
While inaugurating the seminar, University Grants Commission chair A K Azad Chowdhury stressed on learning English language to progress with the project.
Among others, University Grants Commission chairman A K Azad Chowdhury, British High Commissioner Robert W Gibson and British Council Country Director Brendan McSharry spoke at the seminar.
