Education Ministry debuts groundbreaking SchoolNet project

The Ministry of Education will soon launch the SchoolNet online educational system which will improve efficiency and increase academic achievement within the public schools across the nation.

SchoolNet will revolutionize the way school administrators operate, the way teachers teach, the way parents stay involved, and the way children learn. President Mahinda Rajapakse, in a ceremony last week, was involved in a video conference between two schools in the North East and the South and discussed with students their views and reactions to the SchoolNet program, Sri Lanka Telecom which is partly responsible for this programme, said. SchoolNet will allow teachers and students from over 1200 schools throughout the nation to access reference material, tutorials, emails and other educational programmes over the Internet. In addition, for the first time teachers will be able to access several lesson plans on their computers. SchoolNet is an educational programme set up by the Ministry of Education together with the Asian Development Bank funded Secondary Education Modernization Project. This programme allows the SchoolNet communities prompt online access to educational software and enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning in the educational environment. The SchoolNet is based on a Virtual Private Network (VPN) concept in today’s communication industry. The infrastructure and service provider for SchoolNet is Sri Lanka Telecom. Each school will be connected to SchoolNet VPN by using different access speeds based on the current requirements.