Free Internet for Secondary Schools

Details

Education

Thursday, 26 January 2012 02:30

By caribarena news

Antigua St John's - Secondary schools are to benefit from the second component of the Technology for Education 20/20 Initiative, which will see the deployment of campus wide Wi-Fi Internet. 

On January 23, representatives from the Ministry of Information, and LIME Antigua Ltd held a brief meeting with principals from several private secondary schools to discuss the policy, roll-out plan, and other key details of the initiative.

Minister of Information Dr Edmond Mansoor, said in support of the initiative that it is the government’s vision to create a globally competitive society.

“We want to stay competitive... and any child, starting from grade one, who is not on the internet, is at a serious disadvantage," he said.

Molwyn Takes up Cell Tower Issue Antigua St. John's - Senior Member of the Antigua Labour Party (ALP) and Member of Parliament in St. Mary's North Molwyn Joseph has taken up the proli... read more

The initiative will see LIME installing Wi-Fi access points on all public and private secondary school compounds to serve the students and staff of their respective institutions.

 Additionally, it was emphatically stated on several occasions that while access to the internet is the primary goal of this initiative, security is paramount, and serious measures will be taken to ensure that content deemed harmful to children by the schools, such as pornographic and other explicit material, will be unavailable from the network. Moreover, anyone accessing the network will have to accept the policy put in place to ensure that the network is used as intended.

Dr Mansoor encouraged the private school principals to fully embrace the initiative. He said, “I am very convinced, having spent a lot of time studying this, that having students and staff access the Internet can be a great equalizer in an increasingly competitive world."

Some of the benefits to be derived by the students and staff from this revolutionary initiative are:

•    Increased and improved accessibility to information – students and teachers can gain access to the network from anywhere on the school compound within range of an access point, giving them the ability to use ICTs where and when it is needed.

•    Lower long-run costs – while the initial investment required for Wi-Fi network can be high, installation expenses can be significantly lower than that of wired LAN. Moreover, the ability to quickly and easily add or remove devices on the network, e.g, mobile handsets, printers, laptops, tablets, etc. without having to use wires and create ports saves money in the long-run.

•    Users will also have access to information from devices they already use and own, which will reduce the amount of money that will have to be spent on purchasing and replacing computers and other hardware.

•    Flexibility for teachers and students – teachers and students with a wireless enabled device can access the wireless network to share resources, conduct research on the Internet from the classroom or anywhere within a range, save and access files online, etc.

Attorney Pens Complaint Letter Antigua St. John's - The recent publication of a recorded interview between the police and MP Asot Michael on the IHI matter has sparked some dramatic... read more

•    Increased portability – this allows students and teachers to interact from anywhere on the compound as opposed to being confined to a room with limited space.

The pilot project will take place at the Baptist Academy of Antigua, and may begin as early as next week.  Other schools to benefit from the first tranche of installations will be AE Goodwin Faith and Hope Secondary School, Christ the King High School, and St Joseph’s Academy.

• < Prev
• Next >