Government will work towards ensuring that every Fijian child has the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information.

The Attorney-General and Communications Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, while launching the Microsoft Education in Transformation workshop at the Suvavou House in Suva yesterday, said in order to have digital literacy, the education curriculum would need to have a very sustained and definitive programme, not just by simply giving somebody a laptop.

The workshop is to educate teachers on what education really means when it is transformed using technology as an accelerator.

“We are blessed to have Intel Microsoft and HP with us and they of course will be taking us through that process; I think you know we have seen many countries of how digital literacy had been introduce with a big bang and everybody gets happy with the laptop and the devices but within a year or two years; the whole thing crumbles,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.

“You have to understand what the content is; you have to know what type of content, and you have to know how to use the content in order to teach the curriculum.

“Also in this day and age, the ability to change the curriculum, but in order to ensure that you have digital literacy capture an audience, you need to be able to expand that and other facets in a child’s life,” he said.

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said it was being talked about that the digital age of great technology would bring people together and make everybody equal.

However, he said in fact it could turn out to be the opposite say if a person used 4G network in parts of Viti Levu whereas the people in Vanua Levu don’t have access to it.

“In fact this creates a much wider gap between the have and have not; those that are connected and not connected.

“Government is very mindful of such situation, this is why the Minister for  Education has made some fundamental changes; now redirecting grants so you have smaller, more isolated schools getting bigger grants per child compared to the bigger schools in the urban centres, i.e. that is very critical to understand,” he said.

Edited by Manasa Kalouniviti

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