PESHAWAR: Honouring the promise to offer innovative and practical solutions to the problems students and teachers face in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the provincial government has set up 339 Information Technology labs at the public sector schools and 678 expert teachers and lab assistants have been recruited there so far. Officials told The News for the year 2015-16, a total of 500 IT labs will be established. Around 1000 IT teachers and lab assistants will be recruited there. It will cost around Rs 1.5 billion to the exchequer. The lab assistants and IT teachers of all high and higher secondary schools will be assigned sanctioned posts in this fiscal year as well. Up to 520 posts have already been created, said the officials. The IT labs and the facilities provided therein have started bringing about a change for the better both for the students and teachers of the government-run schools. “Roman Shah, a 9th grader from the Government Hayatullah Shaheed High School No 1, Rajarr in Charsadda, said, “The children of this school have no computers at home as they cannot afford them. We all know that after a few years people that don’t know computers would be exactly like the illiterate people of today but we simply don’t have the means. But now things are changing for us. I am very grateful to Minister Muhammad Atif Khan. He inaugurated this IT lab in our school. Now we can learn computers and compete with others.” An official said that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has also decided to provide the best and cutting edge teaching aids to teachers in the form of Tablet PCs and Interactive Whiteboards. These teaching aids will help the teachers expand their pedagogy beyond linear, text-based teaching and truly realize their potential. In a recent ceremony held for rewarding the High and Higher Secondary School teachers for their outstanding performance, Minister of Education Muhammad Atif Khan also distributed 2399 Tablet PCs among the subject specialists of the government higher secondary schools. On each Tablet PC, the digital contents of Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics of class 9th and 10th have been uploaded. A total of six tablets per government higher secondary school were distributed. The Interactive Whiteboards are yet another initiative to revolutionize the education system that has suffered stagnancy for ages. Around 100 Interactive Whiteboards have already been installed in different schools across KP with solar panels back-up. One can see the IT teachers as well as the Science and Math teachers at the Government Higher Secondary Syed Mobeen Shah Afridi Shaheed School No 1 Cantt, fully engrossed into a training session on effective use of the Interactive whiteboards. Shumaila Iftikhar, MSC Computers Science, taught ICT at Beaconhouse School System for six years. She now works as the ICT teacher at the Lady Griffith Government Girls High School Peshawar. She said, “I have worked as an ICT teacher in Beaconhouse School System Senior Branch for six years and they didn’t have any Interactive Whiteboard. It is a very expensive teaching aid and I am very thankful to our government of KP for providing this cutting-edge technology to the children of those that cannot even dream of it”. When asked why did she take the additional burden of mentoring other teachers in learning the effective use of the newly provided technology, Shumaila replied, “Since our government is doing so much for us, I want to do something in return and that is the reason why I mentor other teachers.” Shazia, a 12 grader at the Begum Shahabuddin Girls Higher Secondary School at Got Khatree also shared her views and said: “In the beginning we all didn’t know anything about computers. I couldn’t even dream that one day I would be able to use one. Now Computer Science is my favourite subject, I am so keen to complete BS in computers. But my parents won’t be able to afford it probably.”
