7 News Belize

Making Curricula Credible
posted (June 26, 2017)
In the last few months the Ministry of Education has been making moves to integrate online learning into secondary school curricula. Last month Minister of Education Patrick Faber hosted representatives from the Ministry of Education in Antigua and Barbuda for a conference on introducing e-learning into our high schools. Today the Ministry has taken another step in that direction by launching the Curriculum Writing and Content Development Project, an undertaking that will see high school teachers from around the country rework course materials to be suitable for online learning. We spoke to Dr. Sheldon Samuels, the Ministry official spearheading the project, about the importance of the move...

Dr. Sheldon Samuels - National ACE Coordinator
"This workshop today is very essential, it's historic in all proportions because of the face that we are taking 39 teachers from across the learning institutions and the ITVET to come together and to write secondary subjects to e-subjects. In fact there are 14 subjects that will be written to e-subjects. I think it's 10 secondary subjects and 4 technical subject areas. So it is very important because what that does is to say to the other school population and even the secondary school students, that there is no excuse in the future for not being able to get access to your material, to your assignments, your notes, because these subject areas will be written to e-subjects and will be placed on a platform and management system."

"One of the goals of the Ministry of Education is really to create more access for out of school populations, which I can speak to very much. We have a huge percentage of our population that is out of school, but they're desirous of going back to school. But because of many of the challenges that they face, challenges such as maybe their jobs conflicting with school, their families and even the physical separation from the campus, those things places some serious challenges for the learner. So, with now doing this form of training and getting these subjects in the online platform of mode, it will be saying to these out of school population, that we are now creating access to you. You'll be able to access this material from the confines of your home or from wherever you are. And these challenges that you have will no more be challenges."

The new online curriculum will also be available to those without internet access through a program containing all the information.

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