Kali­fa Clyne

Mul­ti­me­dia pro­jec­tors, 55-inch Smart TVs and ra­dios with CD play­ers will be dis­trib­uted to schools in six weeks in a bid to make T&T's pri­ma­ry school pupils as tech-savvy as their sec­ondary school coun­ter­parts.The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion yes­ter­day an­nounced its in­ten­tion to dis­trib­ute 500 of each of the equip­ment to pri­ma­ry schools through­out T&T at a cost of $12 mil­lion.

The an­nounce­ment was made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar while she dis­trib­uted Leno­vo Thinkpad lap­tops to stu­dents at St James Sec­ondary School yes­ter­day.Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so an­nounced that 428 stu­dents who sat CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions this year would re­ceive Gov­ern­ment schol­ar­ships.Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Tim Gopeesingh said af­ter the func­tion that the Gov­ern­ment had saved $400 per unit this year on its pur­chase of lap­tops to stu­dents en­ter­ing Form One at sec­ondary schools.

Gov­ern­ment pur­chased 21,000 lap­tops at a cost of $58 mil­lion–18,000 of the lap­tops will be dis­trib­uted in T&T while 3,000 will be sent to St Lu­cia as part of a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with that coun­try.Gopeesingh said St Lu­cia would be pay­ing the Gov­ern­ment for the lap­tops shipped to them.He said min­istry had al­so sent out a ten­der for a provider of wifi In­ter­net ser­vices to schools."We have broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty in­creas­ing to 25 megabytes for pri­ma­ry schools and 50 megabytes for sec­ondary schools."

Gopeesingh said the min­istry did its part to en­sure the use of the lap­tops for ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es."You will al­ways find some aber­rant dys­func­tion­al use (of the lap­tops) but in the main­stream the pos­i­tives that have em­anat­ed by the giv­ing of the com­put­er have thrown the ed­u­ca­tion process miles ahead of those who do not have it," he said."If you do not have IT (in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy) in ed­u­ca­tion you will be left be­hind."

"We gave them the lap­tops for them to be ed­u­cat­ed in in­for­ma­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy, to re­late to teach­ers and peers on home­work."Gopeesingh said the min­istry did not man­date how the lap­tops were in­te­grat­ed in­to the school cur­ricu­lum."The prin­ci­pals and teach­ers are the ones who man­age the use of the lap­tops. As far as the in­for­ma­tion we are get­ting, the chil­dren bring the lap­tops to school," the min­is­ter said.