NEWS: SchoolNet project a boon to students

KUALA LUMPUR: Ninety-nine per cent or 9,618 schools nationwide benefit from the SchoolNet project, Deputy Education Minister Dr Mohd Fuad Zarkashi said.

He said under the project, 6,633 schools had been equipped with computer labs and 3,025 have school access centres.

"Based on these figures, I believe our schools are on par with schools in other countries in terms of SchoolNet and educational technology usage," he said in reply to a question from Tan Seng Giaw (DAP-Kepong) in the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.

Mohd Fuad said the EduwebTV programme introduced by the ministry on March 1, 2008 to create an IT-savvy generation had a positive impact because it enabled students to continue learning from their homes.

EduwebTv has an average of 500,000 hits per month with 33% coming from homes.

"The web TV hits in April, 2009 alone reached 397,977," he said in reply to a question from Datuk Noraini Ahmad (BN-Parit Sulong).

Noraini had asked how far educational TV broadcast through the Internet, or EduwebTV, had benefited rural schools in respect to narrowing the rural-urban digital gap in education.

EduwebTV is aimed at addresssing the limitation of using educational TV where teachers are unable to fit in the school period with the educational TV programme schedule.

"With EduwebTV, the teachers can choose the education TV programme according to their school timetable and the teaching and learning process in the classroom," said Mohd Fuad.

He said EduwebTV is also effective in that students benefit from the Education News (English/Bahasa Malaysia), Academic, Feature, Interview, Curriculum, Interactive segments and archive live broadcast segments.

Mohd Fuad said that up to June 31, 3,185 programmes had been downloaded as EduwebTV content.

He said through EduwebTV, students could also enhance their skills in using the Internet because EduwebTV had to be accessed through the SchoolNet network.

"For those with no Internet facility at home, they can access the EduwebTV programme outside school hours through School Access Centres set up at schools."

To a supplementary question from Noraini, he said that up to early this year, 10,488 teachers and education officers had received training on using EduwebTV in the teaching and learning process. - Bernama