Acting Permanent Secretary, and substantive Director of Education in the Ministry of Education Glenn Francis and principal of the Montserrat Community College, Paul Payne attended a two day meeting in Grenada, where they joined their counterparts from the OECS in Grenada earlier this month. Thy met to explore the possibility of setting up an OECS knowledge research and the education network.
Upon their return Paul Payne spoke to ZJB radio and explained, that the whole idea is that within this network you can accept trade information, classes and share resources. “For example,” he said, “somebody can be teaching a class in Jamaica and a student in Montserrat can participate live, because we have the the broadband/web to allow to facilitate that. In fact part of the meeting in Grenada allowed some people to actually see a demonstration with a class being held at a community college and students on other islands can participate through live interact video.”
He further said, “…you can then extend that to a class being taught right across the world, and students in Montserrat will be able to participate in that class,” noting that “you can also extend beyond education. It’s a research and education network, so you can also extend to E- government, Tele- medicine, closed and limited to all of these research and education network.”
Payne explained further that the function of a national research network is to support the development of communities of interest for educational research, share extensive education resources, collaborate in developing the E- infrastructure…at a reduce cost.
The principal revealed that the Caribbean network will be launched as a regional institution later this month in Trinidad on February 26 where in fact there will be a demonstration of the connectivity between that and other international research and education network across the globe.
