Education Minister Priya Manickchand on Wednesday declared the second smart classroom in Guyana open at Queen’s College in Georgetown.
The classroom, second of its kind in the public education sector, would benefit not only Queen’s College, but would be used to reach students in other secondary schools across Guyana, who can benefit from lessons which they may not be able to receive in their respective schools, a Department of Public Information report has stated.
Education Minister Priya Manickchand sitting through an English B lesson with students of Queen’s College in their smart classroom on Wednesday
Manickchand has said the intention is to eventually have a smart classroom rolled out in every high school across Guyana. She said the Education Ministry is on track to deliver 20 more such classrooms within the coming weeks. The COVID-19 pandemic, she noted, has shown how important technology is to the education sector.
“COVID has underscored how much we need advances and additions to our traditional chalk-and-talk, and it would have come in very useful if we had these features in the classroom; but we cannot wring our hands for what we don’t have, but we must recognise it as a failure and move on aggressively to rolling out these classrooms across the country,” Manickchand is quoted as saying by DPI.
She is encouraging persons to see COVID-19 as an opportunity to do better for the country by improving systems and implementing initiatives to improve the education sector.
She told members of the staff and administration of the school that they now have a duty to share knowledge and information to as many students and teachers as possible using the smart classroom.
The smart classroom, she added, would also be made available to master teachers who are not attached to the school, in order that they might use it to facilitate teaching students from various schools virtually, particularly if those students don’t have a particular subject teacher attached to the institution, or whether they need additional assistance with a topic or subject area.
President of the Parent Teachers’ Association, Kwabina Griffith, has said the school is excited about the classroom. She said this is the direction that education must go. The principal of the school, Ms. Jackie Ralph, also delivered remarks and echoed similar sentiments.
During Wednesday’s launch, Dianne Henry taught an English B lesson while engaging students physically in the smart classroom and those that were at home.
