Eight-five secondary and tertiary students received 10 inch tablets with detachable keyboard today from the Ministry of Education. While these are not the tablets long-promised by Minister of Education, Patrick Faber, they are still necessary to assist students who cannot participate in online classes. A brief ceremony was held today to distribute the tablets, and Chief Education Officer, Carol Babb, spoke about how the Ministry procured them.
Carol Babb, Chief Education Officer
"We distributed 85 tablets and they were donated by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Peacework. All the students who received tablets today are members of what we call a Youth Leadership Council. For the past twenty years, PricewaterhouseCoopers have come to Belize, they have supported Belize in the development of financial literacy. Over twelve years, they've been giving scholarships up to the amount of $40,000US yearly. So all these students, we have given them scholarships yearly for four years and then we get another four, so every year we give about 80 students a scholarship. And so I reached out to the executive director of Peacework asking him to support the students with tablets because, as you know, our students are doing distance education and if they don't have devices these students will definitely lag behind. So out of concern for them, I wanted to make sure these students are on top of things, that they are engaged meaningfully and they have an opportunity to succeed in life."
"We've uploaded them with the Microsoft suite so when these students leave from here, they can start to use these tablets with their online education. I think it's very important that they get this device because many of these students were getting just packages but that is so different. With this tablet, now they can interact with their teacher, they can ask questions, they can ask their teachers to model certain things that they don't understand."
The tablet also comes equipped with other educational apps.
