New teaching methods benefit teachers, students:

Education online

by Husna Inayathullah

A community initiative to promote IT literacy and the use of IT education in many rural schools in Sri Lanka has been launched by the Commercial Bank of Ceylon enabling students to follow lessons online.

Begun as a national scale community program, this has been a long term program of the Bank's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agenda, a spokesman for the bank said.

These two main areas were chosen after a careful consideration of the bank's vision and the development road map of the Government. The Commercial Bank donates computers, printers, tables and chairs to set up IT labs for rural schools under its IT program. Up to date the bank has donated IT labs to 165 schools across Sri Lanka.

Rural

At present these IT labs assist more than 160,000 students in rural schools. We visited three rural schools in the Bandaragama and Horana areas to witness the online education program in operation and spoke to some students and IT teachers as to how it is benefiting them and how it has changed the learning and teaching methods recently.

Early morning the first school we visited was Horana Meewanapalana Maha Vidyalaya in Horana. It was a Sinhala medium school situated in a beautiful rural landscape surrounded by mountains and paddy fields. We walked into the IT lab donated by the Commercial Bank where a Mathematics teacher was demonstrating a Maths lesson through the online method to the grade six students.

Mathematics Teacher Uresha Samarappuli said, "The computers to our IT lab were donated by the Commercial Bank in January but this particular 'Sipnena' website with online facilities which is used to teach the children from grade six to 12 was launched in April. Children enjoy studying Maths through the online method and they come running into the IT lab. These children are not much fluent with the English language so it is a little difficult for them to follow. 'KhanAcademy' under the 'Sipnena' website helps children do Maths lessons."

Dimension

Earlier this year, the Commercial Bank introduced a new dimension to this initiative with the launch of 'Sipnena' in partnership with Microsoft Sri Lanka, University of Colombo and H-One, a leading full service IT solution vendor. The website is registered under .com domain and hosted on the Microsoft cloud by Microsoft Sri Lanka. The 'Sipnena' website offers students free access to content carefully selected to support their educational needs in line with the local Sri Lankan curriculum.

R.A. Chamodh, a grade six student said, "I love to learn Maths through the online method. It is very interesting and fun. The normal way of classroom teaching using the chalk and blackboard is boring. This is good as it helps us to learn both Maths and Information Technology. I like this way."

The Principal of the school, K.A.S. Punyasiri said, "There are approximately 470 students who offer IT as a subject in this school. Our school does not receive the benefits which are received by most of the national schools today. I am so happy that Commercial Bank is doing such a project for a rural school such as ours. It is really great as IT skills have become very important today."

Next we visited the Horana Thaksheela Maha Vidyalaya where they had English Medium as well. The students at Thaksheela found it easy to grab the lessons which were taught online as they were good in the English language. Teacher in charge Kasuni Aryarathana was teaching Maths lesson for the grade 8 students when we visited. She was an active teacher and the students seemed to be really into the lesson.

Subjects

Aryarathna said, "There are two computer labs in our school. Both were donated by the Commercial Bank. One lab is used to teach subjects online and the other lab is used to conduct the CISCO networking course. The students are given a international recognised certificate once they complete the CISCO course. Subjects such as Maths and Science are tested by a written exam and not through the online method."

Junior Executive Officer at the Operations Department at the Commercial Bank, Jeevan Perera said that in 2013 the bank launched an innovative online education program for 20,000 students from 20 schools. They were provided the facilities to access carefully selected Mathematics and Science lessons through a specially created website.

He further said, "The Commercial Bank's CSR Trust worked with graduates of the University of Colombo to provide these online educational programs to students from Grade three to G.C.E. Ordinary Level. We can see an active involvement of the IT and subject teachers in the respective schools. Today more than 60,000 children from 66 schools use this online education resource to supplement their learning."

The third and the final school we visited was Agamathi Balika Maha Vidyalaya in Panadura. The grade 10 students were following the CISCO Computer Hardware course as we walked into the lab. It was a very interesting classroom session.

Trained

IT teacher Ganga Priyangani said, "The Commercial Bank has trained two teachers to conduct the CISCO course. We were given training at the Katubedda University. At the end of the training we were awarded a CISCO Instructor certificate which is internationally recognised. The students are too awarded with a internationally recognised certificate at the end of the course. This is an extra subject which is done apart from the normal school curriculum. Students stay after school to follow this course. It is a great thing done by the Commercial Bank. We are happy about this is as it is very useful."

The nine schools participating in the initial phase of the 'Sipnena' initiative are Meewanapalana Maha Vidyalaya, Horana, Sri Parakrama Maha Vidyalaya, Aruggoda, Denagama Maha Vidyalaya, Hakmana, Nagalakanda Navodaya Maha Vidyalaya, Minneriya, St. Thomas College, Matara, Jaffna College, Jaffna, Rambuka Maha Vidyalaya, Kalawana, Hiriwadunna Maha Vidyalaya, Kegalle and St. Andrew's College, Nawalapitiya.