Sept 2004: Project Update
Update: Phnom Penh, September 20th 2004
ICT Policy
An ICT policy working group, comprising directors of various ministry education departments was formed in February 2004. The working group met twice to update each other on developments in ICT in their departments and to discuss the draft ICT policy developed in February 2003. By early April 2004, an ICT policy Workshop had been held to allow a wide range of stakeholders to have an input. Support was given by an ICT policy expert from UNESCO Bangkok. The workshop provided an opportunity for staff from different departments to liaise and discuss progress and future plans for using ICT. Input was collected from participants and used to amend the draft policy.
The working group plan to meet for the fourth time in October to finalize an ICT educational policy and to launch it in December 2004 with publication for distribution of this policy paper to concerned institutions. In the future, the project will conduct a national survey on ICT for education in Cambodia to present a picture of existing ICT resources in formal and non-formal education at all levels in both the public and private sectors in the country; and to make recommendations to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) on short-term and medium-term strategies to improve the quality of education through the use of ICT. In this way, the project will continue to assist MoEYS in refreshing its enabling environment and policy support.
E-learning Bus
Under the project, an e-learning bus delivers education right to the people that need it most. The bus has been on the road now for one year (since August 2003). Nearly 3,500 disadvantaged young and adult people, especially orphans, street children and out-of-school youth have had access to its facilities either using laptops, digital cameras or watching educational videos. Eighteen out of 24 provinces have been visited so far and over 40 educational VCDs created in Khmer on health and life skills. The videos on HIV/AIDS are among the most often requested. It is planned that this E-learning bus with multimedia equipment and trained personnel (NFE staff) are to be handed over to MoEYS by the end of this year.
Teacher training
A total of 28 master teacher trainers from all teacher training colleges in the country were trained under the project as master trainers in February-May 2003. The course covered basic skills, use of ICT as a teaching and learning tool and management of IT teaching and resources.
Since the last project update, the Teacher Training Dept (TTD) of the Ministry of Education Youth and Sport (MoEYS) has continued its training of teacher trainers in ICT, using project resources and master trainers trained by the project staff in 2003. By mid-August 2004, over 300 teacher trainers (or more than half of the total 600 teacher training staff) had received 96 hours of ICT training. The project provides technical support to the training, in the form of a scheme of work, training manuals, and CD-ROMs of resources. An outline curriculum for primary and lower secondary teacher training has been drafted, distributed to the colleges and amended using their feedback.
In addition to the MoEYS training, a 45-hour training course on ICT in education was given to 29 teacher trainers at the National Institute of Education, where teachers of upper secondary schools are trained. The training was very well received, with trainees keen to put into practice what they had learnt. Ethernet cable donated to UNESCO from a Japanese individual donor was used to network the computer room and teacher trainers were able to use the Internet to download educational resources for the first time.
Meanwhile, a 5-day "Hands-on Training Course on Basic Website Design" in the Khmer language was held in late June 2004. Twnety-nine designated teacher trainers and MoEYS staff were trained to design a very basic website for their respective institutions and subsequently publish their work on the MoEYS's website. The course included the preparation of images for websites by using the graphics program Fireworks, a digital camera and scanner and the setting-up of a simple website using the website design program Dreamweaver. A digital camera and scanner were distributed to each of 25 teacher training institutions and two departments working with teacher training and curriculum development. Webpages of these teacher training centres have been published on the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport website.
A 5-day Training Workshop on building capacity in research and production of web-based educational resources and audio-visual learning resources in Khmer was organized in July. Thirteen teacher trainers from regional teacher training centres and the National Institute of Education attended. This course was aimed at enhancing participants' knowledge on producing a sample set of learning resources for various subject areas in Khmer language (see the Teacher Training Department website) and encouraging MOEYS to take advantage of existing ICT potentials.
Content for training
The project discovered early on that the major barriers to progress in training teachers to use ICTs to improve learning in Cambodia are unavailability of resources in Khmer and lack of hardware. For this reason, one of the main points of focus of the project has been developing these resources. Training manuals on using ICT in teaching and learning and a glossary of ICT terms for teachers were developed in Khmer. A training CD-ROM containing learning resources – software, templates etc. was put together and copies were given to all teacher training centres and colleges. Additional improvements are being made before these are printed for distribution to various Teacher Training Colleges.
Later, the project will develop a detailed scheme of work based on these training manuals. Project staff will liaise with the group of experts within MoEYS who have just begun work on curriculum reform. This is to ensure that the teacher training curriculum in ICT is developed in line with proposed national plans for school curriculum.
Related work to set up the National Clearing House Web server for educational resources is underway. Training on MoEYS website administration and management will be organized soon after the release Phase II project funds. As part of their ICT courses, teacher trainers produced teaching resources in Khmer and these will be uploaded on the clearing house website when it is ready. In the meantime, the local NGO ‘Open Forum of Cambodia’ is translating information about ICT from UNESCO into Khmer for inclusion on their website.
Computer donation
The lack of hardware and the finding of more computers are one the main points of focus of this project. A total of 161 second-hand computers donated by a Japanese individual donor (61 Macs) and the National Korean commission for UNESCO (100 PCs) were distributed to teacher training colleges.
Without these donations, the training of student teachers in ICTs would only have been possible in a handful of colleges. Now, all but a few colleges have enough computers to equip a computer room. Before they are sent to the colleges, all computers are checked and have suitable software and Khmer fonts installed.
Future plans
UNESCO is working in cooperation with MoEYS to modernize secondary school educational facilities in Cambodia. Towards this goal, UNESCO has teamed up with pc4peace and different international groups to find sources of educational equipment, including second-hand computers. Under this potential sub-project, pc4peace is responsible for collecting, refurbishing and shipping computers from Japan to Cambodia, while UNESCO can distribute those computers to secondary schools in close collaboration with Cambodian authorities, and train the teachers accordingly.
Interestingly, a donor from Japan is willing to send up to 300 computers if the transportation costs can be met by the project.
A core group of teacher trainers will be trained in computer repair and maintenance so that MoEYS has its own human resources to care for further donated computers in the future, and to ensure sustainability in the use of ICT in teaching and learning process within Teacher Training Colleges.
Bringing resources to the widest group possible, the Project will equip the library of the six Regional Teacher Training Colleges, the National Institute of Education, curriculum developers of Pedagogical Research Department with a computer and necessary sets of CD-ROMs.
Project staff will also assist MoEYS in i) creating a National E-Learning Clearing House and ii) building the capacity of MoEYS's staff in website system administration, website mastering and website document preparation and identify appropriate hardware for MoEYS to set up a National Clearing House. This will become an e-library after having uploaded teaching contents and teaching resources produced by teacher trainers.
The Teaching Training Department and MoEYS will also be assisted in i) updating web-pages of all teacher training institutions and relevant departments and ii) in enriching learning contents in Khmer for MoEYS's National Clearing House by motivating teacher trainers to develop more web-based and electronic learning resources of various grades in secondary level for publishing in this virtual e-library.