Thursday May 7, 2009

E-books to be free,will benefit 23,000 pupils

KUALA TERENGGANU: The promised digital notebooks or e-books for Year Five pupils in the state will be distributed in stages from the end of the month, said Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Said.

The first batch of the 15,000 digital notebooks or e-books, which are Internet-enabled, arrived from Taiwan on Tuesday.

“I am optimistic that our education system would be transformed with our pupils now going fully digital. That will ensure that our students keep pace with the globalisation trend,” he said yesterday.

State Education, Higher Learning, Science, Technology and Human Resources committee chairman Ahmad Razif Abdul Rahman was at a factory in Gong Badak, near here, yesterday to take a look at the laptops.

Looks good: Ahmad showing the notebooks that the pupils would be using during his visit to the factory in Gong Badak , near Kuala Terengganu Wednesday.

Ahmad said the e-book project was part of the state government’s aim at providing quality education, adding that it would also reduce the burden of heavy schoolbags for the children.

“The e-books will be distributed free of charge to the pupils and we hope to cover the entire primary level in the next few years,” he added. “There are about 23,000 pupils in the state who will benefit from the e-book project.”

The first group of Year Five pupils will be able to access education-related portals and archives online when the laptops are handed to them by end of the month.

Although the first batch of laptops were procured from Taiwan, the state government would place the subsequent orders from a local assembler, Intel Electronic, Ahmad said.

The Gong Badak factory is projected to produce 10,000 units a month while the state has commissioned some 100 graduates in the field of information technology to coach schoolchildren and teachers on using the e-books.