In line with Brunei Vision 2035 towards an educated, highly skilled, and successful population, the three-year e-Education Solutions project granted by the Ministry of Education (MoE) and Ministry of Religious Affairs (MoRA) to the Brunei Telecommunication Industry – Unified National Networks Sdn Bhd (UNN), Datastream Digital Sdn Bhd (DST), imagine Sdn Bhd and Progresif Sdn Bhd took effect yesterday.
The e-Education Solutions project is a collaborative initiative between the ministries and Brunei telecommunication industry to supply laptops and Internet data for teachers and underprivileged students from public schools and educational institutions under MoE and MoRA, a UNN press statement said.
The project was initiated last year when it became clear that substantial move to online teaching and learning requires a fundamental size of approach, especially during the pandemic, which have exponentially shifted normal learning in the educational sector from a physical classroom to online classes.
The approach of the e-education project included components for online teaching and learning where high-quality content for online classes must be provided via publicly accessible sources and applications to all students and teachers, digital devices such as laptops must be available for teachers to prepare lessons and generate digital materials for online classrooms, digital devices must be available for students to take part in their online classes especially ones who cannot afford to purchase such devices, and connectivity to bring all the devices and content together.
MoRA’s Head of Information Technology Division Rosyanti binti Haji Lamat said statistics showed a drastic increase in the use of digital technology in religious education institutions since online learning and teaching were implemented. The difficulties faced by teachers including not having devices and data to implement digital technology in educational activities will be alleviated through this project.
“The project also aims to assist underprivileged students and all teachers from public schools under the MoE to help them implement home-based teaching and learning more effectively,” said MoE’s Acting Director of Department of Information and Communication Technology Division Chan Yong Kim.
Spearheading the project worth BND30 million, UNN together with DST, imagine and Progresif have acquired and delivered 15,000 laptops, 1,750 dongles (for Internet data) and over 16,000 SIM cards to schools, institutions, teachers, and students specified by MoE and MoRA since mid-February 2022. The rollout was completed late last week.
From UNN, provisions have been made in the network to provide specific traffic and e-Learning sources as defined by the ministries to the defined user groups, and to ensure that the laptops stay updated and security patches are installed prior to distribution.
While from the service providers DST, imagine and Progresif, the SIM cards in the laptops and dongles are equipped with 10GB of mobile data per month and automatically provisioned monthly to ensure the teachers and students have sufficient data to carry out their e-learning. Data not utilised in that month will be rolled over to the next month and made available without limitations.
From yesterday, the e-Education solution went live where all teachers and students who have received the devices under this project initiative received their first data connection of 10GB monthly.
The statement added, “It is the ministries hope that this three-year agreement between the Brunei telecommunication industry under the e-education solution project will encourage teachers to explore and implement blended teaching methods effectively, and for both teachers and students to leverage on the devices and connectivity provided to enrich their necessary skills and knowledge.”
