Online Education Notable Progress In Bangladesh
Prof. Dr. Md Mahmudul Hassan :
The declaration of Vision-2021 on 12 December 2018 was a visionary step of this government in building a digital Bangladesh. The people of the country are enjoying the benefits of digital Bangladesh in almost every sphere of life. The Access to Information (a2i) project, supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), has made significant contributions to the development of digital services in Bangladesh.
In such a chapter of development and progress, digital services have also been greatly improved in the education sector of Bangladesh, a visible example of which is the continuation of educational activities of students during Pandemic. Bengali speaking teenagers are now able to use the online ‘Kishore Batayon’ platform from anywhere in the world. It arranges online classes for the students. ‘Kishore Batayan’ has been arranged with various subjects to make the students interested in knowledge gathering. The konnect.edu.bd link is required to access and add to the webpage.
Students will be able to read books on this webpage, download, watch movies and upload after cresting contents. They also can analyze various problems of daily life with scientific knowledge and gain practical experiences through various experiments. Only students from grades VI to XII are able to join the webpage. Students between the ages of 13 and 18 can become members of the portal.
Various icons have been highlighted in Kishore Batayan through the drawn pictures. Even if they can’t read the letters, the children will get an idea about the content by looking at the pictures. Its user interface is designed for teenage students. On the home page students can see three menus including ‘Khabardar (caution)’, ‘Idea Box’, ‘Login’. There are also all sorts of fun options like ‘comics’, ‘uploads’, ‘aro chaw (want more)’, life skills or ‘movies’. In a word, this portal is very effective for the students.
A joint venture of the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Primary and Mass Education and a2i has started ‘Shikkhok Batayan’ on 16th May 2013, a website designed to include 9 lakh teachers in this window under the slogan ‘Teachers for the Prosperity of Education’. Digital content for teachers can be accessed through this link at www.teachers.gov.bd.
Teachers have changed the conventional concept of training by ‘Shikkhok Batayan’. Through this online platform teachers can now enrich themselves sitting at any place at any time. There are 953 customizable model content on all subjects of school and college in the Shikkhok Batayan. There are also various blogs, video contents and presentations shared by teachers. So far, 1,62,216 blogs, 2,33,657 presentations and 57,029 video contents have been uploaded on this portal. The website is indeed a unique place for storing thematic content, online exchange of digital content created by teachers for multimedia classrooms. There are 35,000 multimedia classrooms at the secondary level and 14,000 at the primary level in this portal.
Shikkhok Batayan is also contributing to the empowerment of women by reducing inequality. 47.5 percent of registered teachers in this portal are female teachers. They no longer have to travel long distances and be harassed to procure teaching and learning materials. They can collect these at home. Teacher Batayan launched its own e-magazine ‘Batayan Mag’ in 2015. In this magazine, teachers discuss and exchange information on modern trends in education, classroom management, professional and personal management, and ever new teaching materials. In 2015, ‘ShikhokBatayan’ was nominated for the prestigious WSIS Award.
A total of 7,728 Sheikh Rasel Digital Labs have been set up in selected educational institutions to promote ICT education and create employment. Among them, 65 language training labs and 100 Sheikh Rasel Digital Multimedia Classrooms have been set up at the district level. The Sheikh Rasel Digital Labs set up in educational institutions are being used permanently as cyber centers, training centers and ICT clubs. The activities are underway to establish 5000 more labs through Sheikh Rasel Digital Lab (Phase II) project within 2020-2023. Language training software has been developed to teach 9 languages – English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Arabic and Chinese through the language training lab. (Source: National Information Window)
It is a matter of happiness to some extent that many institutions are now internally conducting regular online exams, taking assessment tests and promoting the students to the next class or grade as usual. In the case of higher education, UGC also is now thinking of what could be an alternative to the conventional exam system and meanwhile some universities have started taking online exams. So, in this country of immense potential, it is our expectation that further progress should be made in the development of digital services in the education sector.
(Dr Mahmudul Hassan is Principal, Daffodil International School, Dhaka).
