“ We are living in a digital world – and that is not about to relax in terms of innovations and revolutions. The meaningful changes to sustain the quality of our education is to transform the schools from a traditional closed and locked down institution to one where its students, teachers and other stakeholders would interact in a more modern way.
And not just modern but desirable and appealing for students to learn. Even if schools in Tonga still yearn to hold all information behind locked doors and not allow their students to interact on the internet, the rest of the world was going to do it anyway. We simply cannot rely solely on third parties to publish quality content about what we teach our students.
The importance of reaching out to our digital partners (TCC/Digicel/Tonga Cable/TBC) is to marshal our technology experts whose role would provide advice to our Ministry of Education on the strategic application of new technologies and on emerging technology, digital and social media trends that affect the education and Ministry’s strategic direction.
The education globally is now undergoing rapid change driven by advances in digital technology. The aim of bringing together our ICT partners is to ensure the Ministry has access to external perspectives, specialist insights and trusted advice to ensure the Ministry successfully navigates future opportunities and challenges.
Access to the internet for educational purposes is a core governance issue. It is about relying on our culture rather than new technologies or platforms. It is one thing to have allowed access to the internet or have set up internal collaboration tools, it is another to have the governance structures in place so that insights and ideas stemming from these platforms are recognised and utilised.
The shiny toys and gadgets will always be there: the Ministry has a role to set the culture within the education system and there is a governance role in helping our insitutions to “learn differently”. ”