My School is an iSchool

My school got lucky one more time along with five other schools in the country. We were selected as the pilot schools for iSchool project. I am personally not involved in the project but my friend Kailash Rai is doing a great job in my school. Class IX A is chosen as iClass and there are going to have a wonderful 2014 academic year. The first question on your mind must be: What is iSchool Project about?

"The project uses the high speed internet network in conjunction with top of the line video conferencing technology to allow a few teachers to reach dozens of classrooms and hundreds of students, across Bhutan in real time. Teachers at the ‘master' classroom will teach and reach students in the ‘remote' classroom via video and will also be able to receive and answer normal questions from the students in any of the classrooms.The ‘remote' classrooms selected to participate in the pilot phase are not really that remote given the short time that was available to set up the project. However, in the future, the benefiting schools could well be extremely remote and yet benefit from the best teachers located in selected ‘master' classrooms located anywhere in Bhutan.Besides having access to top quality teachers on a live platform, the lessons will also be available for download for students who missed a lesson, and these lessons can be downloaded from any school.The iSchool idea is not intended to provide a single solution to cover every issue in the education sector. It is just one tool, that in conjunction with many other programs will help to cover every need in the sector.In addition to providing live video conferencing technology to reach many schools, technology such as the ‘smart' camera and associated software provides innumerable tools to the teacher to improve the delivery process. Smart whiteboards with an unlimited number of ‘screens' that can be switched on demand effectively provides an endless number of blackboards on which to present lessons. A document camera will enable the teacher to show real samples to help explain specific concepts to the students." -Pelkhil School Facebook

Lesson in Progress.

I am so impressed by the fiber-optically connected internet speed, which is capable of streaming live video from five school at a time (see in pic) along with high quality audio. Besides that whatever the teacher writes on the smart-board in the master school is directly broadcast on our white board through our projector, and for a person who loves technology this is heavenly.  

It was formally launched yesterday March 29,2014 by Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay from Pelkhil School and the five pilot schools took part in the event virtually. Lynchoen interacted with students and teachers of five schools. Even Education minister joined us from Phuntsholing. The Launch was a big success.

Prime Minister interacting with the Five Schools.

I wish the project all the best and hope every stakeholder will put their heart in this project to take it where it's intended to reach. 

iSherig 2018

Today my team presented the final draft of ICT Master Plan 2018, which we branded as iSherig, to the Education minister, Secretary, Directors, and heads of all the relevant organizations including private sector. We have worked on it for the last four months and have scanned throught three round table meetings. The feedback on the final draft will be further discussed and the Report will be published by mid December 2013.

The following is an illustration of what we are hoping to achieve by the end of first five years of implementation of iSherig, i.e. 2018. I hope to share some more details on iSherig in near future.

iSherig 2018

Education ICT Master Plan 2013-2018

The first Education ICT Master Plan is in the making and I am proud to a part of the team. We began right after the election and will be working on it till November. Last year MoIC and IDA International Singapore did the first eGovernment Master Plan and the next phase is going down to work on the details for a 5-year ICT plan for specific sectors, of which education is one of these.

Our team underwent eight days training together provided by IDA International experts, some of whom were the same people who work on the first Singapore ICT Master Plan in 1990s. Their presence was an inspiration knowing their successful history in transforming Singapore.

The education team started with 15 of us, including MOE officers, DEOs, principals and teachers like myself. Additional resource persons were added to our group along the way when we realized we needed more people with specialized knowledge in some key areas. We began working independently with two Singaporean consultants, and an Advisor and in
over two weeks we came up with the first draft. It was presented to a round table meeting chaired by Madam Secretary and attended by directors of different departments and other stakeholders, including private sectors. It was again presented to Education Minister in a separate meeting. We learnt much from the wisdom of these senior stakeholders of the education sector during these meetings.

Training Period- With Ms. Kar Joo Tan. I am the one sleeping right in front.

The ICT Master Plan aims to rationalize and streamline various ICT projects and activities under the Ministry of Education for implementation over the next five years. It will provide us with a broad holistic vision of how best to harness the power of ICT for teaching and learning.

The work has just begun. Much of the input during the first two weeks were based on our assumptions. Therefore the next month will be invested in validating the facts and for data collection. Upon accumulation of all the require data resources we will sit down to define specific projects and programs, estimate budgets, and specify timeline. Broadly, we are looking at three main areas (1) how to strengthen the integration of ICT into curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, (2) how to enhance the ICT capacity of teachers, students and support staff, and (3) what type of nationwide education and learning ICT infrastructure will be necessary to support these plans.

I am glad to be part of this important project that will help lay the foundation for a quality and relevant education in the country. If you have any idea that may be useful for The Education ICT Master Plan, we will be happy to go through it. But remember this is a personal blog and views expressed here are my personal and not reflective of my team or the Education Ministry.

My GNH Model

This is how an ICT (Information and Communication Technology) teacher looks at GNH model (see the picture). Imagine socio economic development without banks, or banks without the new technologies. Imagine environment conservation without hitech devices. Imagine preservation of ancient texts and their promotion without computers. Imagine government that doesn't employ computer technology.
There is too much to imagine, and we know we can't imagine any of these without technology. But so far we haven't spelled out the role of ICT in achieving GNH, and when something is not specified then it's hard to work on it. ICT needs to be given due importance right now and here.

ICT is the supporter to all Four Pillars of GNH and Light to all Nine Domains. 

Thank You and Goodbye SIF

Yesterday a two member team from Singapore International Foundation visited my school to say a formal goodbye after three years of working together. They spent the whole day here auditing the Bhutan WIREd Project they undertook. 

The project identified five schools- Drukgyel HSS, Chhukha HSS, Punakha HSS, Yangchengatsel LSS, and our school Bajo- and trained five teachers from each school in use of Information Technology in teaching. The project donated ICT equipment to set up a collaborative classroom in each school and brought in six teams of trainers to train 25 of us during the project period. The project also walked the extra mile in taking all of us and our principals to Singapore to give us exposure to how schools there use technology in teaching. Each year the brought in a volunteer and left them at our disposal. These three people, Kong Ming, Jermain and Louis, not only survived our culture and discomforts, they also made their places in the hearts of many Bhutanese teachers. Louis came back again to wind up the project and it was then that I realized how deep an impression he has made on me. I felt like a brother returning home.

And now the time has come for them to say goodbye to us and let us walk our own journey. It's no more difficult to walk independently, the project has done its magic on us and I am saying my goodbye happily. In my final words to our Project Manager Ms. Deeksha, "Please say my thanks to SIF for the finding us and making differences in our lives. I am still amazed at the generosity your organization in a faraway country coming all the way to invest so much in our country." Ms. Deeksha smiled and said, SIF's vision is "making friends for a better world", and I couldn't agree less.
It didn't seem to me that SIF is saying their goodbye yet, they may come back with different project anytime soon and I already committed that if they are going to take WIREd project to other schools we are available anytime.
My love and gratitude to SIF and Singapore!

There are 5 Articles on Singapore in my blog, if you wish to read.

I sat for Chiphen Rigpel TOT selection test

Chiphen Rigpel is a big ICT project in Bhutan by NIIT. It has an ambitious goal of training five thousand teachers and setting up computer lab in every school across the country. Read more on this in MoE website. To kick start the project it needs to set up a core group of 50 members from among teachers. The announcement was floated on the website, which many missed- I nearly missed too if not for my brother in-law. On 12 October the list of applicants were shown on website and were called for selection exam today.

Surprisingly I was not there in the list. In fact no one is there from my school though we all filled up the form and sent. Upon inquiry we realized the our application went missing somewhere on the way. Nobody to blame. Thank god, MoE gave us (me and Mr. Kailash Shongben) the chance to sit for the test today.

Technical paper (1 hr) and Aptitude test (30 min)- it was fun doing exam on something you know quite well. Of course I don't mean the Aptitude test; it had simple questions that could fool a complex man. But I have done well.

Ask me if you wish to try out the Aptitude Test, I can publish the questions...I think it is set by NIIT.