Making rural students computer
literate
The Ministry of Education is to provide lap tops to 13
schools, mostly in the rural areas, in a pilot project that will
see a wide use of computer technology in our school system in
the near future. The project under the title Lap Top for Every
Child will be implemented in collaboration with the Colombo
University.
According to our news report today 1,250 lap top computers
will be distributed to students of the 13 schools. The aim of
the project is to make our student population computer literate
and also arm them with a knowledge of English and IT. A novelty
is that the computers will be operated by solar power
benefitting underprivileged schools without electricity supply.
The lap tops in addition to English is also programed for
Sinhala and Tamil languages and is equipped with all the special
features such as sound track and computer games that would
kindle the interest of rural students who were denied such
luxuries before.
Hopefully all the students will before long be computer savvy
as their more privileged counterparts in the cities. Today lap
tops are mostly the preserve of the affluent and privileged
which poor rural students can only dream of owning.
Therefore the Ministry should be commended for giving these
students the opportunity of handling lap tops and giving them
exposure to a whole new world of knowledge and excitement. The
need to expand IT knowledge among the young school going
population cannot be overemphasized in the present context.
Besides the move would remove the drudgery of students who
are being taken through a meaningless routine of textbook
knowledge and infuse in them a new enthusiasm that may well
reflect in their examination results which had been negative
during the past few years. Combined with the program launched by
the Presidential Secretariat to take IT knowledge to the
backwoods the move is bound to provide the right start in
creating a large computer literate population in the country
which will augur well for its future.
For equipping the young with IT knowledge is vital if we are
not to be left behind on the Information Super Highway and the
modern trends and developments in a fast changing world. It is
doubly important in the current context when the country has
embarked on a new journey towards development and prosperity
after seeing the back of a prolonged war.
The country should now be equipped to be considered on equal
terms with the rest and for this we need to develop our
knowledge base.
Exposing a wider section of the population to the new
developments and frontiers that are opening up in the outside
world is a first step in laying the foundation for achieving
this. For, today no country can live in isolation. While
imbibing the best of our culture and traditions we should seek
to move forward with the rest of the world if the country is to
attain any form of recognition.
Today knowledge holds the key towards advancement and there
are many spheres and areas in this regard which are still hidden
from a large sections of our population.
With the necessary tools now available all steps should be
taken to reshape the thinking and attitudes of our people so
that they may integrate with the global community. For, today
Globalisation has blurred all borders and boundaries and turned
the world into one unit. We too should adapt ourselves to swim
with the tide.
Also with the country set to embark on a massive post war
development drive it is essential that our youth be equipped
with new and innovate skills to shoulder the challenging tasks
ahead. In this context the steps taken by the Education Ministry
to create the necessary base for this should be commended.
It would also be beneficial if our school curriculum could be
suitably tailored to meet the emerging challenges in a new
techno- oriented climate. Other measures should also be taken to
remove inequalities in education opportunities and create the
groundwork for a level playing field. |