Jordan Times
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Jordan, Egypt to
announce joint e-learning initiative
By Mohammad Ghazal
AMMAN — The Ministry of Education confirmed Monday that the Kingdom and Egypt
are to announce a joint e-learning initiative to connect the schools in both
countries.
“Students will interact with their peers in Egypt through an advanced e-learning
network using up-to-date technologies in this field, “ Ministry of Education
Spokesperson Ayman Barakat told The Jordan Times.
The Jordan News Agency, Petra, quoted Egyptian Minister of Telecommunications
and Information Technology Tariq Kamal as telling the Egyptian press in Germany,
that Jordan and Egypt would announce the initiative during the World Economic
Forum to be held in Dead Sea in May.
Kamal is currently on a visit to Germany to attend CeBIT 2005 in Hanover.
“The initiative is designed to follow the example of advanced countries in
providing students with the opportunity to use state-of-the-art technologies,
exchange information with other students and modernise learning techniques,”
Barakat added.
Several local and international institutions specialised in the field of
communications and IT will participate in implementing the initiative, Barakat
said.
During the 2003 World Economic Forum, the Jordan Education Initiative (JEI) was
launched to serve as a model of effective ICT-enabled learning that can be
replicated and implemented across the Kingdom as well as other countries in the
region.
The government-sponsored initiative is a project to transform 96 schools into
model facilities where technology is at the service of learning and teaching and
IT is perfectly integrated in education.
The JEI also seeks to build the capacity of the local IT industry for the
development of innovative learning solutions in partnership with world class
firms.
Companies who have committed to participate in the project include CISCO
Systems, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Siemens and Sun Microsystems, among
others.