Queen Rania Attends a Workshop on the Future of ICT in Education

(Office of Her Majesty- Press Department- Amman) Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah joined today a gathering of ICT and education experts participating in a workshop that discussed the future of ICT in Education in Jordan.

The high level event which was held in Amman and organized by the Ministry of Education in partnership with Queen Rania’a not-for-profit organization; the Jordan Education Initiative (JEI), aims to introduce the latest trends in the use of ICT in education by tapping on the experiences of international companies in addition to a group of local companies that have experience in this field.

Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Intel, Promethean and HP were among the companies that presented applicable solutions and ideas on how to accelerate educational reform through innovation and ICT integration in Jordan.

Her Majesty, who has always believed in the importance of investing in quality education as it is the best equalizer, thanked all the partners and participants for their efforts in improving the status of education in Jordan.

Talking about the importance of offering realistic and applicable solutions, Her Majesty stressed the need to identify the capabilities and infrastructure of each area in order to map out the most suitable strategies in ICT that best meets their needs.

“We don’t want solutions that we are not ready for yet, or projects that would stop halfway because of poor planning.” Her Majesty noted.

Queen Rania added that Jordan used to be one of the pioneers in this field especially that ICT in education has been at the top of His Majesty King Abdullah II’s agenda. However and unfortunately, we still haven’t accomplished all what we aspire to when it comes to integrating ICT in education.

The Queen also encouraged attendees and stakeholders to join forces in order to set out a definitive plan that comes in line and compliments the work of the National Committee for Human Resource Development, which was established under the auspices of His Majesty to develop an integrated, comprehensive and strategic system for human resources development.

Her Majesty then underlined the importance of building partnerships between the public and the private sectors, noting that JEI has been a wonderful example of such successful partnerships in the past.

H.E. Dr. Mohammad Thneibat, Minister of Education and Mrs. Nermine Nabulsi, CEO of JEI both shared their own organizations’ insights on how to introduce robust solutions for ICT in education in the kingdom.

Dr. Thneibat explained that the Ministry of Education (MoE) has developed a national strategy for information and communication to ensure high level performance within the educational system. He added that a steering committee as well as a technical committee have been established to supervise and follow up on setting the execution plans of the strategy to be aligned with the National Plan in this regard.

Today’s workshop was also attended by H.E Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Majd Shweikeh, a few members of the National Committee for Human Resource Development, General Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Director of the Queen Rania Center for Information and Education Technology, and a number of international and local private sector companies’ directors.