1.Smart School Project
The Southern Provincial Department of Education maintains the highest level of achievement in Sri Lanka in the teaching learning process and it caters nearly 521,632 students of 1110 schools in the province. Significantly, at the moment, a policy is being developed in the Southern Province to create standardized friendly classroom culture, blended with new technology and education concepts to suit the 21st century world of work, in accordance to the international standards of the teaching learning process. In this backdrop, it is a blessing that under the assistance of the Government of India, 1.5 million rupees per one classroom has been allocated for 200 schools in the province.
2.Smart School Concept
Introducing a competency-based curriculum in schools requires a comprehensive change and new thinking in instructional approaches to teaching, learning and assessment processes. The use of ICT in education can be seen as a strategic tool to achieve this transformation. The curriculum framework also states: “The curriculum should enable educators and students to use ICT as a tool to improve the quality of education in all subjects at all levels of teaching and learning practices. Information and communication technology should support the emergence of student-centered approaches to teaching and learning and encourage research, communication and collaborative learning. The Southern Province
3.Purpose and Objectives
- To help teachers develop students' abilities and performance to face new challenges.
- Compile educationally quality and visually rich curriculum resources, enabling teachers to access multimedia content and information that can be used to teach students more effectively.
- To enable every child to express his views to the teachers.
- Being able to understand concepts clearly. Visualization of abstract concepts (eg:. solid objects)
- Availability of spaces for interactive and lively teaching to elaborate and compare different objects and perceptions for specific concepts.
4. School Selection Criteria
For the 200 friendly classrooms in the Southern Province, the Southern Provincial Education Department and the Provincial Ministry of Education focused on the following criteria:
- More attention was given to schools that did not have opportunities for learning and teaching using a tablet computer.
- Schools were selected adhering to the national education policy of providing equal educational opportunities to every child in the Southern Province, prioritizing those located far from the center of each district. Special attention was given to children in difficult schools far from media centers.