In 2009, CLP introduced Smart Class Room (SCR) concept to bring the educational opportunities provided by advances in personal computers, Internet, educational CDs, and ICT-based interactive learning materials to secondary school students in rural Bangladesh. In a SCR, students learn through the use of interactive educational CDs and the Internet. Every SCR is equipped with a laptop, a large screen television, an IPS or Solar, and interactive CDs. The students learn using these educational CDs and the Internet. These audio-visual and interactive learning materials enhance students’ learning experience, and serve as useful tools for teachers.
While it is desirable to teach every subject in a SCR, the initial focus was on four subjects: Everyday English, Geography, Mathematics and Science. This is because student-experience-sensitive educational CDs were available on those subjects. However, the need and demand for contents and lesson plans that can accompany the NCTB (National Curriculum and Textbook Board) curricula for different grade levels was always high. In 2011 the CLP-Dnet team arranged a workshop for selected high school teachers to seek their input on the topical areas that they would prefer to teach using multi-media contents. With feedback from participants in the workshop, multimedia contents consisting of an assortment of videos, animated games, flash animations and power-point slides were developed with the help of experts for nine NCTB books covering four subjects and English Grammar for different grade levels (detailed in the table below).
13
June-2020 –June 2021
14
June-2019 –June 2020
19
June-2018 –June 2019
201
Smart Class Rooms established in Bangladesh to date.
Later, the National Curriculam and the text books were revised and a good portion of the originally developed contents did not correlate with the new text books. The need for new contents became apparent. Consequently, a research team from the Institute of Education and Research (IER) of the University of Dhaka was consulted in 2015 to map out the existing NCTB books and determine how many modules originally developed in 2011 were still useable and delineate the need for new modules. Guided by this need analysis the team produced the required new multimedia teaching modules (some developed in-house and most others adapted from open source)
The team also developed detailed step-by-step lesson plans for each period for each of the nine subjects to guide the teachers on how to conduct the class and to communicate with the students. Some lesson plans contain more-than-one multimedia content and some do not contain any. A computer CD containing teaching contents encompassing four regular subjects covering multiple classes as well as lesson plans for each textbook as described in the table has been produced for use by the teachers. This CD (pictured right) was mailed in 2016 to all schools with SCRs. CLP also trains the teachers to browse Internet and collect contents from the open sources and /or prepare teaching content themselves in the PowerPoint.
Recently CLP developed a plan to expanded the SCR with appropriate hardware to include remote conferencing and/or volunteering capabilities allowing introduction of two new programs (Connect Students Around the World and the Remote Volunteering Teaching) for overall development of the underprivileged students.
$3300
is the total cost for establishing one Smart Class Room.
For this we include:
- A 50 inch or larger LCD TV in a classroom
- IPS (for the monitor) for uninterrupted power
- A laptop with extended-charge battery
- Interactive CDs for English, Geometry, Geography and Science lessons
- Training of the teachers (four or more)
- One-year maintenance contract
Sponsorship Benefits
- Opportunity to empower youths from sponsor’s locality
- Opportunity to choose the site
- Honored by a plaque at the site
- Option to dedicate the center in the memory of someone the sponsor chooses
For the list of schools with sponsored SCRs, click here.
Example of plaque onsite at a SCR.
