مدرستنا والإعلام

Friday-Saturday, April 25-26, 2003

http://www.jordantimes.com/Fri/weekend/weekend14.htm

E-LEARNING | Putting computers in schools is only a step on the road of e-learning. Ahmad Humeid takes a look at some Jordanian educational sites.

Do we have e-learning?

Interesting fact: The first government school in Jordan to create a website a few years back was the Eil Comprehensive School for Boys in Maan (www.khayma.com/alresalah/). This was the effort of an enthusiastic teacher who probably did it in his free time. Yet the fact that a school in Maan would be the first to go online is telling. Computer and IT enthusiasm has reached every part of Jordan and everyone has caught the IT bug. Not surprisingly, the site is extremely amateurish, but to its credit, has a guest book where, among others, former Eil students, some writing from Europe and the US, have left messages expressing pride in their school.

The site's amateurishness can be forgiven when one visits the websites of some of Jordan's more “upscale” schools, which undoubtedly have far better resources than a lone teacher in Maan. Most of these schools have badly designed online “brochurware” while educational content and interactive parent or student online facilities are missing (see, for example the site of The Amman Baccalaureate School at www.abs.edu.jo).

Yet, I was pleasantly surprised when, the other day, I got a letter from my son's school, informing me that as a parent I can log into their website and view reports and other materials online. That's a step in the right direction.

I checked the site of the Ministry of Education to see what they have to say about e-learning. The link on the ministry's home page that says “e-learning” takes you to a pathetic site that is, I am sorry to report, almost information-free. It was last updated in August 2002 and there is simply no content there. Undoubtedly, the ministry is doing something about e-learning, but their site is not the place to read about this.

Content (or rather the lack of Arabic content) is a problem that plagues the growth of the internet in the Arab world. E-learning without e-content is a pipe dream, even if we have a PC on every student's desk.

Two Jordanian companies have, using different approaches, tried to tackle the issue of educational content: Menhaj.com and SchoolArabia.com. The presence of these two companies testifies to Jordan's relative strength in Arabic content development.

Menhaj's site claims to cover the Jordanian and Saudi curricula for Arabic, Science and Mathematics. This content is accessible for paying subscribers. The site has some free content for students and parents as well.

Taking a totally different approach is SchoolArabia.com. Operating out of a small office in downtown Amman, they insist that educational content should be free and claim to have amassed tens of thousands of pages of educational content, especially in the fields of science, contributed by teachers from Jordan and other Arab countries. The site is extremely popular with tens of thousands of visitors referring to it on a monthly basis.

With education and e-learning high on the national agenda in Jordan, such efforts deserve all the support they can get. Only the intensive cooperation of government, schools and the private sector can make e-learning a reality in Jordan.

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