Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath says the launch of the Min­istry’s Form One dig­i­tal AI text­books will ease the fi­nan­cial bur­den on par­ents, re­duc­ing the need for cost­ly text­books.

He was speak­ing at the launch of the ini­tia­tive at the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School yes­ter­day.

The min­is­ter said Form One stu­dents, who re­ceived gov­ern­ment-is­sued lap­tops af­ter sit­ting the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion last year, now have ac­cess to dig­i­tal text­books for Eng­lish and Math­e­mat­ics.

He ex­plained that ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty would not be an is­sue, as in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty is not re­quired.

“By the end of this term, we are adding four more dig­i­tal books - Sci­ence, In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, So­cial Stud­ies and Span­ish and by Au­gust of this year, stu­dents when you go in­to Form 2, we will have those six books ready for you at the Form 2 lev­el.”

He said the min­istry con­duct­ed a pre­lim­i­nary cost­ing, which showed that dig­i­tal text­books will save par­ents of stu­dents in Forms 1 and 2 be­tween $1000 and $1500 for the next aca­d­e­m­ic year.

“These dig­i­tal books have the kind of re­sources where our stu­dents dur­ing school time and af­ter school can in­ter­act with that AI Avatar and ask ques­tions about the aca­d­e­m­ic work. The text­books are aligned with the na­tion­al cur­ricu­lum.”

The min­is­ter added that with­in three years, they ex­pect to de­vel­op dig­i­tal text­books for all lev­els at the sec­ondary school and are al­so look­ing at dig­i­tal text­books for pri­ma­ry schools.

He said the tech­nol­o­gy was not meant to re­place teach­ers but to strength­en their abil­i­ty to de­liv­er the cur­ricu­lum in more ex­cit­ing ways.

Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin, who is al­so the MP for Moru­ga/Table­land, en­cour­aged the stu­dents to take full ad­van­tage of the tools be­ing giv­en to them and en­sure that they use them for the in­tend­ed pur­pose.

She said the tech­nol­o­gy may al­so re­duce the need for par­ents to pay for ex­tra class­es.