158 / 208
Most recently, the Ministry of Education unveiled its vision of
enhancing the educational process using e-Learning. This was an
area where we could again lend considerable expertise. The goal
of the project was to foster a classroom environment of educa-
tional interaction via a so-called ‘virtual classroom solution.’ This
would offer students self-paced learning materials and help the
ministry to generate and distribute a uniform curriculum that
also recognized students’ specific educational needs.
Young students were able to join virtual online classroom
sessions, share information and work on documents together in
a live and interactive environment. Led by an experienced teacher,
the sessions would typically involve up to 200 students who would
gather around a number of PCs from approximately 10 schools
located anywhere in Egypt, with the ability to connect to the virtual
classroom session. Today, sessions reach more than 450 schools
participating in more than 50 daily live sessions. There are more
than 90 e-Learning courses now available in the ministry’s Content
Repository for all K-12 subjects. The self-paced courses were devel-
oped by the ministry’s 65 content developers, who were trained
in instructional design by Siemens content professionals.
Siemens’ solution provided students with the ability to study
any time, anywhere, via Internet and intranet technologies; this
configuration also offers students, teachers, school administra-
tors and parents, as well as the Ministry of Education, the ability
to track all student activities including registration, fees, class
schedules and equipment.
Siemens provided e-Learning software, professional services,
training for the system administrators and content developers,
and the communications infrastructure of the project for both
the LAN (Local Area Network) and WAN (Wide Area Network).
ICT supporting education in Anatolia
Children make up 27 million of Turkey’s population of 65 million.
So the education and, in turn, the future success of this country
both as a candidate for membership in the European Union and
as a gateway to the Middle East is especially important.
At high schools in 12 provinces of Southeast Anatolia, World
Bank loans provided the financing to equip computer laborato-
ries. But due to a lack of educational software, the computer
learning programme never got off the ground. Siemens took up
the cause by equipping the computer labs with our Akademedia
e-Education software packages.
The facilities now offer intensive computer and general educa-
tional training to a huge number of students each year – more
than a thousand students took part in the first year. This enables
an equal opportunity for high school students in this less affluent
region of Turkey to fully prepare for the national university entrance
exam – without which higher education would be out of reach.
The students in the programme were monitored and examined
by B_TAV (the Scientific and Technical Research Foundation).
Prior to an intense three-month period of use of the educational
software, students were found to perform at an average of 35 per
cent on a standard test. After using Akademedia for three months,
the students’ achievement was found to have risen to 60 per cent.
Moreover, out of this 600 of the total 1018 students that
attempted the university entrance exam, 60 per cent were able
to find placement in a university, where 20 per cent placement is
the general average for this region.
Following the success of this project, there was a huge demand
for Akademedia software from all parts of Turkey. Siemens quickly
provided an additional 5,000 Akademedia software packages to
the National Education Foundation.
India: making great strides
India, once a region of great concern, is now a shining example
of how ICT can revolutionize an economy, a culture and of course
lift a country from poverty to prosperity, and how bridging this
digital divide translates into new market opportunities. India is
[
] 158
Education is the basis of future welfare in all countries
Photo: SIEMENS