Minister Phillip applauds PM’s vision to provide fifth form students with laptops
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St. Kitts and Nevis’ Minister of Youth Empowerment, Sports, Information Technology, Telecommunications and Posts, Hon. Glenn Phillip holding one of the laptops to be presented to fifth form students in both St. Kitts and in Nevis (photo by Erasmus Williams) |
BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, MARCH 18TH 2011 (CUOPM) – St. Kitts and Nevis’ Minister of Youth Empowerment, Sports, Information Technology, Telecommunications and Posts, Hon. Glenn Phillip is praising the Federation’s Prime Minister Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas for fulfilling his promise to provide each student of the fifth form in St. Kitts and in Nevis with a laptop.
“In his foresight the Prime Minister did not just require that each student is provided with a laptop, but rather that each student receives a tool that could help shape them into productive citizens, innovative thinkers, problem solvers, a new breed of citizen, equipped to form part of a Knowledge Society,” Minister Phillip told the St. Kitts and Nevis National Assembly Thursday.
He said the One 2 One Laptop Project Initiative for fifth form students, their teachers and education administrators in all secondary schools across the Federation, is a move towards and beyond ICT literacy to information literacy could be firmly in place.
Minister Phillip told the lawmaking body that the One 2 One Laptop Project Initiative had as its mandate not only the sourcing of laptops that were deemed suitable to the cause but also the crafting of support structures required to ensure that the laptops were put to best use by the students and that some form of sustainability was in place to keep the project afloat for future high school students.
“At the heart of the One 2 One Laptop Project Initiative Task Force efforts were the I-Literacy Initiative that was initiated by the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party Administration when it assumed office in 1995, and the National ICT Plan of 2006.
“In the 90’s the Initiative’s aim was to equip the nation’s students with the necessary skills to function in a tech-savvy world. The initial phases of implementation of the I-Literacy Initiative, were focused mainly on ICT literacy and included the establishment of computer labs in all primary and secondary schools across the Federation as well as exposure of educators in all schools to ICT Training,” said Minister Phillip.
He said that while in the 2006 the National ICT plan introduced a shift of mindsets that spoke to intellectual resources, capabilities and potential from an ICT point of view, it spoke to the reality of smarter societies, lifelong learning and the capacity to actively contribute to the production of local content for electronic resources.
It was he said to expand on-going computer literacy efforts in primary and secondary schools into information literacy and cultural improvement programmes through appropriate curricular and pedagogic changes.
“Train teachers in the use the computer as a tool for teaching Reading, Writing, Mathematics, Art, and other core subjects, and working with the Curriculum Development Unit (CDU) and the Education Planning Division that drove the One 2 One Laptop Project Initiative having realized that by providing a state-of-the-art laptop to every student, as well as making them available to teachers and education administrators in all secondary schools across the Federation, that the tools for the move towards and beyond ICT literacy to information literacy could be firmly in place,” Minister Phillip told the National Assembly.