Commonwealth supports ICT teacher training in Guyana

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Education Initiative in Guyana, designed to harness the potential of computers and the internet to improve the quality of education for school children, was given a boost by the Commonwealth Secretariat with the engagement of an ICT education specialist.

The South African consultant, Neil Butcher, will collaborate with the Guyana Ministry of Education (MOE) to improve teachers' ICT literacy and to train them to use computers as a teaching and learning tool.

“The training will assist teachers in using network resources to enable students to access information on the web, as well as to communicate and collaborate online on study projects,” said Anthony Ming, Informatics Adviser at the Secretariat.

Mr Butcher will work with the MOE and the National Centre for Educational Resource Development in Guyana to develop teaching manuals that can be used in computer labs in primary and secondary schools.

This ICT in Education Initiative is supported by the Secretariat, Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and Microsoft, with the aim of strengthening the implementation plans for more effective use of ICT in the classroom. By September, the MOE hopes to have training modules on using ICT in education available for trainee teachers at the Cyril Potter College of Education and the University of Guyana.

In a statement the MOE said it is confident that these activities, combined with other ongoing projects in the field of ICT in education, will make a significant contribution to the ongoing efforts to use education to create an ICT-literate society, knowledgeable workforce, and a better life for all Guyanese.

The MOE will now work with its partners globally to secure international accreditation for these training modules and implement a three-tiered governance model to monitor progress.

Last year the Secretariat, COL and Microsoft signed a Letter of Agreement (LOA) to implement UNESCO’s ICT Competence Framework for Teachers, an internationally recognised framework to promote ICT education. Guyana is the first country where the framework is being implemented under the LOA and the experiences from this programme will be used when implementing the framework in other Caribbean countries.