ISLAMABAD ( Web News )
After the successful training & deployment of Google for Education tools and technologies at the selected three Islamabad Government Schools, the Closing Ceremony was held at Islamabad Model College for Girls. The ceremony was organized to mark the completion of an important milestone towards the revolutionization of the conventional education system and to appreciate the continuous efforts and support of Google technologies, the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training and Tech Valley Pakistan. On this occasion, Mrs Farah Hamid Khan, Secretary Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training said, “We are going towards the new normal and we must quickly adapt the new technologies. Our next big goal will be to digitally enable 400 more schools across Pakistan and empower the teachers and students with the latest educational tools.” As a sole country partner of Google for Education in Pakistan, Tech Valley provided professional development and consultation to teachers and administration. The educators were trained on the impactful use of Google technology in the classroom and to teach students and work collaboratively with other faculty members in a distance learning environment. “After the successful completion of this pilot project, we have assessed all the challenges and opportunities. Now we are envisioning a bigger picture where we will be going to digitize the educational institutions of Pakistan under the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Digital Pakistan”, said Umar Farooq, CEO Tech Valley Pakistan. In the first phase of this project, G Suite for Education was deployed in educational institutes – that consists of productivity tools designed for the classroom including Gmail, Classroom, Docs and Drive – at Federal Level. This phase included helping schools setting up an initial G Suite environment and user accounts, enabling the right security settings and migrating users along with their data to G Suite. Brent Server, Google for Education Country Program Manager, said, “We believe that the technology is an enabler and it brings quality education to the students. If they have access to technology, they have access to the whole world. But technology is as good as the teachers who support it.” Following the deployment, teachers were trained through a program designed and managed by Google for educators called Google Certified Educator (GCE) that will help the institutes in using G Suite for Education as part of their teaching and student learning. The program combines classroom experience with Google-developed training resources. As a next step, certifications for this program will be provided to the teachers. Furthermore, with the support of Google technologies & efforts of Tech Valley, a handful of Chromebooks – that is the latest product of Google – will be rolled out to the schools as a part of the pilot project. These secure, simple, and powerful devices, that update automatically, are easy for schools to set up and manage, with multiple form factors, accessibility features and security builtin. Disseminating Chromebooks across schools during the pilot phase will help in upgrading the existing electronic components of educational institutes and help them become technologically advanced. Tech Valley Pakistan is a digitally enhanced social enterprise that was founded in 2015 with the mission to inculcate the culture of technology and entrepreneurship. Digitization and E-governance are some of their priorities to pave a path of sustainable growth. They have worked with various partners including but not limited to IT ministries, INGOs, and many local and international incubation centres. Their work aligns with the Prime Minister’s campaign of “Digital Pakistan” to shape digital transformation and provide e-solutions to the citizens. To further support the vision of Digital Pakistan, Tech Valley has partnered with Google for Education, Google Cloud and Google Workspace