CCDKM : The Research Center of Development Knowledge Management

Bangpreang telecenter is located at Kotharam Primary School; the school has 80 students and 3 teachers who also happen to be the telecenter operators as well. Since it is a telecenter-based school, active teaching and learning was observed, with high motivation among the students, to learn the different subjects and new technologies.

Thanks to the telecenter infinite ways of enabling people, the limited number of the school staff (teachers) was no more a problem. The three teachers of the school devised an innovative way of teaching their students, in order to cover the shortage of teachers; they used multimedia on teacher lecturing techniques, listening topics, students using computers to follow up the daily assignment, and child-to-child interactive learning approach, whereby the children help each other when the teacher is covering another class.

Though the Kotharam School teachers were the ones who demanded for telecenter to be installed in their school from the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, yet, they were little bit skeptical about the telecenter benefits, they had the feeling that it will add more pressure to their situation, since they were already over stretched and over-burdened by the shortage of teachers in the school. Nevertheless, when one of the teachers was sent for ICT training and he was able to train the others, they had a different view of the telecenter all of a sudden. They sensed as if they increased in number and each of the 40 computers in the school represented an extra teachers added to their school. One teacher said that he cannot describe his feelings, he believes that they are stronger than before, that the students are performing better, and I are happier that before, they are learning new things such as how to use computers, use the internet, browse the web and access to the daily lessons and assignments.

Bangpreang telecenter staff (the teachers), besides, managing the school and the telecenter; enabling their students and the community to gain ICT knowledge they also extended a helping hand to the staff from other telecenters, school teachers and students by offering free computer training every week-end at Bangpreang or at telecenters in neighboring provinces. They so far trained about 400 teachers, students and telecenter staff.

The Bangpreang telecenter case is teaching us that the telecentre initiative is (1) setting up a precedence in reinforcing the global movement towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) i.e. reducing poverty, illiteracy and information gap; (2) Strengthening the dissemination of the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) by enabling the child to development to maximum capacity, permitting children to understand their rights to free expression, their rights of getting access to and sharing information, etc.; and (3) Telecenters could be a forum for re-enforcing the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) by reducing the discrimination and increasing chances for women advancement.

The telecentre initiative is a social mission and a golden opportunity for human development since it enables learning, knowledge sharing, collaboration, social cohesion and integration and builds up strong networks and strengthens people’s skills through innovative ideas that helps develop individuals and societies. In a nutshell, telecenters could be a short cut to achieving some if not most of the articles in the Convention of the Rights of the Child through the exposure of ICT children at an early stage, such as the one of Bangpreang, where teacher’s burden is reduced and children’s school performance improved and broadening their horizons.

Mohamed