By Emma Elebeke

Traditional teaching and learning methods in the conventional classroom is about to phase as an ICT firm, Teledom Group International, said it has perfected plans to launch the first global smart classroom in the country.

The new digital technology enhanced classroom, expected to be launched by President Goodluck Jonathan, is expected to boost the quality of teaching and knowledge assimilation level of Nigerian students by leveraging learning technology, such as computers, specialized software, audience response technology, video conferencing platform, interactive smart board, multimedia projector, LCD TV, DVD player/recorder, USB duplicator and SATA storage device among others.

Disclosing this to newsmen, CEO of Teledom Group, Dr Emmanuel Ekuwem, said that the smart classroom, when launched would dramatically make teaching and learning more efficient and improve the quality of education in the country.

According to him, access to ICT is fast becoming a human right with the rapid expansion of internet-delivering infrastructure.

He explained that the traditional teaching and learning methods  in conventional classroom seem not to have delivered the much needed dividends to the student, the teacher and the society at large, evident in the quality of products we have in our society today.

“If we sincerely desire to improve the quality of teaching and learning, then we must do the needful and integrate ICT in our learning processes. ICT has become an indispensable tool in the pursuit of knowledge, acquisition of it and its translation into productive activities wherever one is.

“Although, most ICT applications are concentrated on achieving more efficient or cheaper ways of performing existing tasks, its integration into the education system is mostly concerned with sharing of resources, allowing access to wide range of information in different formats,” he said.

Speaking on the peculiarity of the new technology, Ekuwem said “with smart classroom, no teacher can walk to the class unprepared, as the teacher has to prepare ahead of the class, maintaining that the need for increase in the quality of teaching cannot be overemphasized.

He added that the smart classroom will run on locally-made computers by OEMs in Nigeria, saying that thousands of jobs are expected to be created in the process of setting up the smart classroom with more jobs also to be created by the products of a smart classroom.

“Learning becomes fun with excitement to learn more and apply knowledge and there is mass attraction to the classroom by the youth. Boredom in class is gone forever,” he added.