8,000 Electronic Devices for High School Distance Education

Patrick Faber

When it comes to the secondary level, distance learning will commence in the first week of October.  This, according to Minister of Education Patrick Faber, will be done primarily through digital learning. The ministry will make available roughly eight thousand electronic devices where e-textbooks will be uploaded. Minister Faber explains that the ministry is partnering with Telemedia to find a way to connect students to the internet.

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education

“At the secondary level, which we have indicated will reopen Monday, October fifth; distance education will be done primarily online. The Ministry of Education will be distributing digital learning devices and electronic text books to all secondary school students who not have access to those resources. The Ministry is also working with the Belize Telemedia Limited to identify suitable arrangements for secondary school students who are currently without internet connectivity so that they can have access to their school’s online resources.   It is basically the same digi-learn platform that we have piloted for all of this time using a suite of software programmes from Office 365 which is licensed to our government free of cost. We have not really decided whether the students will own the device just yet and there may be a minimal cost to load the textbooks. But what this means is that cost of having text books that are now three, four, five hundred dollars in some cases will be brought to a minimum.”

Secondary level teachers will be attending a month-long training in September to prepare them to teach by way of distance learning methods.