Md. Liaqoat Ali Shaikh :
Portraying the eternal significance of teaching, illustrious Chinese philosopher Confucius once asserted- “If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children.” Educating children today may yield substantial and perennial return throughout century. But such long-term investment will come out extensively sustainable if and only if efficient strategies, requisite equipment and appropriate implementation are ensured. Therefore we must leave no stone unturned to formulate and implement feasible and effective teaching-learning environment.
As the world has witnessed tremendous enhancement of innovative technology, we must incorporate technology in the education sector, especially at primary level. Without introducing relevant technology of 21st century in line with competitive world, the objectives and outcomes of extensive educative program will experience deplorable consequences. Equipping a classroom with multimedia in this aspect can play a pivotal role in making classroom environment more interactive, more efficient and more sustainable.
Bangladesh government has taken enormous initiatives since 2010 to convert the conventional classroom to multimedia-enriched classroom distributing laptop, multimedia projector, internet modem and other instruments to schools. So far more than 50 thousand laptops and approximately 25 thousand multimedia projectors have been distributed. As a result, out of 65,000 classrooms, almost 12,000 classrooms have already been transformed into technology-driven multimedia. Still government is relentlessly striving to extend the scope of multimedia classroom.
The inception of multimedia classroom in Bangladesh has ushered a new era in enhancing quality education in both primary and secondary level and revolutionized teaching-learning mechanism in the classroom as compared to conventional one. Thus the application of multimedia in classroom through delivering digital contents, audio clips, video materials and animation for children has made the learning robust, attractive and delightful. More importantly, such classroom is facilitating to make tough, abstract and rigorous lessons more lucid, concrete and comprehensive than ever before. Consequently, the lessons that once intimidated the students are now considering a piece of cake for the students!
For instance, we can think about enhancing language proficiency. A language skill specially listening remains deplorably incomplete and inconclusive unless the students enjoy the experience of discussion which is next to impossible except multimedia classroom. On top of that, multimedia classroom can eliminate the phobia of science through implementing practical review of lessons. The lessons of science- like the function of heart or the blood circulation mechanism of human body, chemical reaction in organic chemistry or photosynthetic effects of plants- can capture adequate concentration and subtle understanding with relentless application of multimedia contents.
But maintaining effective and interactive classes throughout the country, especially in the remote area where the number of dexterous teachers is meager, is a cumbersome task. For dearth of IT skills and inadequacy of training facility of the teachers, many instruments are not properly utilized to cater lessons to the students. In this context, the unwillingness is also to blame. More importantly, maintenance of aforesaid equipment is indispensable for sustainability of multimedia classrooms.
Therefore government must take long term strategies to provide training to teachers so that they can implement the harvest of technology to the students. Besides, converting the conventional books to interactive digital books with animation, audio and video can have astronomical impacts in the environment of classroom. Despite this task being Herculean, government must do so to ensure equal quality of classes throughout the country irrespective of geographic location and demography. In addition to this, maintaining a common platform as a repository of all those contents can alleviate the skill mismatch among teachers and apply the quality of contents of skilled teachers from other schools. Thus the distance between teachers can drastically decline.
To conclude, today’s children are the flourishing future of our country. So providing quality education and armoring them with competence for surviving in the technology-driven dynamic 21st century is indubitably is a matter of paramount importance. Under such scenario, multimedia classrooms play and will continue to play a magnificent role to turn over a leaf in the history of Bangladesh. Let’s hope for the best!
(Md. Liaqoat Ali Shaikh, Upazila Nirbahi Officer, Sherpur, Bogura)
Portraying the eternal significance of teaching, illustrious Chinese philosopher Confucius once asserted- “If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children.” Educating children today may yield substantial and perennial return throughout century. But such long-term investment will come out extensively sustainable if and only if efficient strategies, requisite equipment and appropriate implementation are ensured. Therefore we must leave no stone unturned to formulate and implement feasible and effective teaching-learning environment.
As the world has witnessed tremendous enhancement of innovative technology, we must incorporate technology in the education sector, especially at primary level. Without introducing relevant technology of 21st century in line with competitive world, the objectives and outcomes of extensive educative program will experience deplorable consequences. Equipping a classroom with multimedia in this aspect can play a pivotal role in making classroom environment more interactive, more efficient and more sustainable.
Bangladesh government has taken enormous initiatives since 2010 to convert the conventional classroom to multimedia-enriched classroom distributing laptop, multimedia projector, internet modem and other instruments to schools. So far more than 50 thousand laptops and approximately 25 thousand multimedia projectors have been distributed. As a result, out of 65,000 classrooms, almost 12,000 classrooms have already been transformed into technology-driven multimedia. Still government is relentlessly striving to extend the scope of multimedia classroom.
The inception of multimedia classroom in Bangladesh has ushered a new era in enhancing quality education in both primary and secondary level and revolutionized teaching-learning mechanism in the classroom as compared to conventional one. Thus the application of multimedia in classroom through delivering digital contents, audio clips, video materials and animation for children has made the learning robust, attractive and delightful. More importantly, such classroom is facilitating to make tough, abstract and rigorous lessons more lucid, concrete and comprehensive than ever before. Consequently, the lessons that once intimidated the students are now considering a piece of cake for the students!
For instance, we can think about enhancing language proficiency. A language skill specially listening remains deplorably incomplete and inconclusive unless the students enjoy the experience of discussion which is next to impossible except multimedia classroom. On top of that, multimedia classroom can eliminate the phobia of science through implementing practical review of lessons. The lessons of science- like the function of heart or the blood circulation mechanism of human body, chemical reaction in organic chemistry or photosynthetic effects of plants- can capture adequate concentration and subtle understanding with relentless application of multimedia contents.
But maintaining effective and interactive classes throughout the country, especially in the remote area where the number of dexterous teachers is meager, is a cumbersome task. For dearth of IT skills and inadequacy of training facility of the teachers, many instruments are not properly utilized to cater lessons to the students. In this context, the unwillingness is also to blame. More importantly, maintenance of aforesaid equipment is indispensable for sustainability of multimedia classrooms.
Therefore government must take long term strategies to provide training to teachers so that they can implement the harvest of technology to the students. Besides, converting the conventional books to interactive digital books with animation, audio and video can have astronomical impacts in the environment of classroom. Despite this task being Herculean, government must do so to ensure equal quality of classes throughout the country irrespective of geographic location and demography. In addition to this, maintaining a common platform as a repository of all those contents can alleviate the skill mismatch among teachers and apply the quality of contents of skilled teachers from other schools. Thus the distance between teachers can drastically decline.
To conclude, today’s children are the flourishing future of our country. So providing quality education and armoring them with competence for surviving in the technology-driven dynamic 21st century is indubitably is a matter of paramount importance. Under such scenario, multimedia classrooms play and will continue to play a magnificent role to turn over a leaf in the history of Bangladesh. Let’s hope for the best!
(Md. Liaqoat Ali Shaikh, Upazila Nirbahi Officer, Sherpur, Bogura)
