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Education IT

Multimedia classrooms in Bangladesh

By Xinghui Guo | 1 April 2011

Bangladesh, the eighth most populous country, is establishing a multimedia classroom in every school. Under the care of Access to Information (A2I) Programme of Prime Minister’s Office, a US$1800 multimedia classroom will be installed in each of the country’s 32,000 secondary institutions.

Afzal Hossain Sarwar (pictured), Consultant, A2I, said to FutureGov Asia Pacific that this decision was made based on the cost-effectiveness of the education technology.

“If we were to establish computer labs of 20 computers, it will require huge amounts of money, US$14,000 each, but there is no guarantee that all students will get lab access. But if multimedia classrooms were established, each student in the classroom can benefit from the laptop, projector and professionally-trained teachers.”

Within the next two years this project will be extended to another 20,500 schools, effectively “reducing the digital divide”.

The decision to install multimedia classrooms instead of computer labs was also swayed by the country’s infrastructure.

Sarwar said, “Electricity and broadband internet connections are still major challenges in Bangladesh. Multimedia classrooms require a lesser amount of electricity.”

Apart from education technology initiatives, A2I was also involved in the development of the National ICT Policy 2009. Under this policy, the Bangladesh Research and Education Network (BdREN) aims to connect all universities and research institutions within the country with high-speed internet access.

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