The Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) has asked the Gov­ern­ment to host the sec­ond an­nu­al Vir­tu­al Ed­u­ca Caribbean Con­fer­ence in 2013. Dr Riyad In­sanal­ly, OAS re­gion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive, made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day at a launch of Pe­te the Pan­stick ed­u­ca­tion­al soft­ware held at the Dig­i­cel IMAX Cin­e­ma, One Wood­brook Place, Port-of-Spain.

Vir­tu­al Ed­u­ca is a South Amer­i­can mul­ti-na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion fo­cused on stem­ming school drop-out rates through in­no­v­a­tive ed­u­ca­tion­al tech­niques. The first Caribbean con­fer­ence was held from Feb­ru­ary 28 to March 3 in Para­mari­bo, Suri­name, where Pe­te the Pan­stick pro­duc­er Sime­on San­di­ford was a fea­tured pre­sen­ter.

The soft­ware digi­tis­es steel­pan mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion and was de­vel­oped by Sime­on San­di­ford of Sanch Elec­tron­ix, through part­ner­ships with an­i­ma­tors and var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions. Pe­te the Pan­stick is cur­rent­ly be­ing im­ple­ment­ed in lo­cal schools through a pi­lot pro­gramme at Cor­pus Christi Col­lege, St Charles Girls' High School and Suc­cess Laven­tille Sec­ondary School.

The pro­gramme is the newest ad­di­tion to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's e-Con­nect & Learn (e-CAL) pro­gramme. The pi­lot pro­grammes are spon­sored by British Gas T&T and Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd. San­di­ford said in ear­ly May he will de­liv­er a we­bi­nar to South Amer­i­can part­ners on an OAS plat­form. He added that his com­pa­ny planned to run train­ing ses­sions for ed­u­ca­tors in the near fu­ture.

In the fu­ture, San­di­ford wants the soft­ware to be avail­able world­wide. "Our mis­sion is to en­sure that the steel­pan be­comes in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cept­ed as a main­stream mu­si­cal in­stru­ment," he said. Oth­er speak­ers in­clud­ed Re­pub­lic Bank's cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Jacque­line Quam­i­na and Ian Ivey, prin­ci­pal of Next Caribbean.