GNI Nepal for promoting quality of education at public and community schools through use of ICT (Information Communication Technology) in classroom teaching-learning and raising awareness of students and community members, designed the SMART CLASSROOM Project in late 2015. The Project has the main objective of improving the quality of education by integrating ICT in teaching.
In the first phase of implementation, the Project will cover 21 community schools in Kaski and Parbat districts. All 21 schools will have a SMART CLASSROOM that will, primarily, be a multimedia-aided teaching-learning, and secondarily, an IT facility for designing, processing, and management of all information generated at the school; and for lesson planning, developing course related materials, printing, and scanning.
A program was held on 7th June 2017 at Damside, Pokhara to orient the teachers on all aspects of the project and to hand-over the SMART CLASRROOM electronic equipment: laptops, three-in-one printer, projector, and sound system. Head teachers and SMC chairpersons of 11 Project schools in Kaski participated in the program and received the ICT equipment. Another orientation for 10 head teachers and 10 school management committee (SMC) members of the target schools in Parbat District was held in Kusma, Parbat on June 22, 2017. ICT equipment sets were handed over to them during the orientation.
A three-day Teachers Training Program on “Digital Library and Learning” was also successfully conducted in Pokhara on 10th June 2017. 21 computer subject teachers of 21 target schools in Kaski and Parbat participated in the program. The staff from Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Nepal, educational material digitalization partner for the Project, facilitated the entire training.
The teachers were trained on the installation of digital offline library and use of the digital education materials in everyday teaching and learning. They shared that due to lack of requisite skills and ‘projection-able’ course content, in spite of having some ICT equipment and resources, their schools have not been able to integrate ICT in classroom teaching-learning. Participant teachers expressed hope that the training and establishment of SMART-CLASSROOM in their schools would be quite effective for them to incorporate ICT into daily teaching and learning and help their students to learn easily and quickly.