Curriculum for grade four, five digitised

Education minister says all students will be given access to the digital books

LAHORE: Punjab Education Minister Murad Raas announced that the curriculum for grade four and five has been digitised. Speaking at a special ceremony on Thursday, the minister said that the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) has taken a great step by digitising the curriculum.

He maintained that all students will be given access to the digital books while software will be developed to determine the number of teachers and students. He added that major changes are being introduced in the curriculum. Large scale awareness regarding e-learning is needed, he expressed.

A marketing team will be constituted to digitise the curriculum from grade six to grade 10. The e-learning system needs to be user-friendly, he stated. PITB Chairman Habibur Rehman said that the board will also introduce software for the education department to house their HR data.

Further, training sessions to educate teachers on the e-learning application will also be conducted. He maintained that the application contains 670 animations, 3,288 audio lectures, 580 Urdu voice overs, 130 simulations and 260 MCQs.

In October, PITB distributed tablets to over 200 teachers in seven districts across the province while multimedia classes were also conducted in 856 schools. Around 12,000 teachers were also trained during this phase.

Previously during the testing phase, 60 schools from three districts in the province were selected. Out of 60, 30 were provided with a digital screen and a tablet while the other half were not, he explains. Within a year, the result at the schools that were provided a digital advantage improved by 74%.