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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

brac: ICT and Education


Bangladesh is yet to achieve the standard status in the field of ICT. Post-primary basic And Continuing Education (PACE) Programme of BRAC has taken initiative to help government to achieve the very status and, is involved in many aspects of quality improvement of secondary education specially to enhance IT skills among the students and community. PACE is catering on Computer Aided Learning activities for the students of secondary schools of Bangladesh and Gonokendro activities for the mass of the communities.

BRAC started developing the Computer Aided Learning programme in 2004 to improve the teaching capacity of the teachers and to make the classes much more interesting, interactive and exciting for the students so that they become interested and want to stay in school more than their usual time. The broader objectives of the Computer Aided Learning (CAL) are - to move from the teacher centred classroom to a more interactive one, to make the class more interactive and engaging, to ensure conceptual clarity and better application, to increase teachers’ understanding of the lessons, self learning provision for both teachers and students and to familiarize the rural students and teachers with the modern computer technology. PACE developed learning software on English Language learning and on General Mathematics based on the National Curriculum. For the implementation of the programme PACE is providing some special support – a computer, a multimedia projector with big screen and a two hour’s capacity UPS each secondary school (22 schools in 6 districts). PACE stepped towards with some other additional help – training to teachers, extensive follow up and feedback, arranging workshop on critical findings and giving technical support.   

BRAC undertook an initiative in 1999 to offer IT facilities to community. PACE has provided 1013 (as of January 2010) Gonokendros (learning centres) in selected areas with computers. The objectives of the Gonokendro are: to increase the habit of reading, to create an opportunity of getting the knowledge about home and abroad, to make the communities familiarized with IT, to develop the Gonokendros as information centre of the communities, to help the youth to be free from moral degradation, to ensure the participation of women in every activity. The learning centres offer computer training in three packages: Children’s package, Students' package and a General package. The duration of training is one month for the Children's and Students' packages and three months for the General. In the case of Children’s and Students’ packages, a physically challenged or an ultra-poor student is provided with training free of charge. The librarians facilitate the training courses. They are supported by a 12-day basic, six-day refresher and 18-day advance training to enable them to run the computer-training packages effectively.

PACE has a plan to extend its IT support to 1500 Gonokendros (Learning centres) attached with secondary schools in a standard scale.

4 comments:

  1. I liked your post! And the transformations being made for the students are also very good. Extra attention has been given to students by offering them more facilities. Wishing you good luck!

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  2. Thank you for your comment. I would welcome any of your suggestion for the further development of our rural learners.

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  3. Hello.

    Nice to read your blog. I think I have met you once on the staircase of BRAC centre (introduced by Aziz bhai). Also, it was really inspiring to see the other blogs of the English team. Great work!

    Shubhechcha.

    Fattah
    BRAC SDP

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  4. Thank you Fattah bhai for your inspirational comment. I am trying to. I would like to invite you to visit my website: www.musadderul.webs.com I tried to go through your blog. Perhaps that is yet to be published. When you will publish that let me know please.

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