The Parasol Group Inc said the nine-to-three, five-day-a-week schooling routine that Bahamian students have become accustomed to, is outdated and needs a major boost. President of the multi-media company Thom Sisk said an anytime, anywhere learning process should be implemented in The Bahamas to ensure that learning isn’t confined to the classroom. He said his company has offered the government to undertake a new, high-tech education model.
“We propose the Education Re-Creation model that is anytime, anywhere learning,” Mr Sisk said. “We have to let students know that learning does not stop when they leave the classrooms or when they leave a computer lab.”
Mr Sisk added that the Education Re-Creation model requires that all students from kindergarten through grade 12 are equipped with computers and laptops with “educational tools” that will facilitate learning. He added that this new model will provide students from grades four through twelve with their own laptops and will also allow them to share their school experiences with others throughout the country and the wider world.
The more updated education model also seeks to eliminate the use of textbooks and other schooling equipment that seem to have “not changed since the early 18th century.” “The existing education model that we’re using, we find them dysfunctional, out of date and highly insufficient in teaching skills that they can use in the real world,” he said. “We suggest and promote one on one computing from grade four on, [kindergarten] to grade one we suggest that students share one computing device so that they get used to collaboration and sharing and respecting the learning tools.”
Mr Sisk said The Bahamas is far behind other countries as it relates to partnering education and technology. He added that programmes like Education Re-Creation are needed to give the country the boost it needs.
He explained his surprise when he saw a young Bahamian man sitting on the jitney with a laptop in his lap.
“That’s standard procedure in my country,” Mr Sisk said. “Back home you see people with laptops on the planes and on the buses, but in this country I don’t see that.”
Source: The Nassau Guardian
