Flag/Unflag
this is the story of dhonsoru.
dhonsoru like thousands of maldivian students wake up at 6 am to go to school. but he is everything but normal, his scool consists of a class room hall that has his very own personalised computer at every desk. This is not so common in the tiny islands of maldives. The new UN sponsered trial of integration modern technology in remot islands of maldives is undervay in his small communal island of dhonfenfushi. here 35 students from grade 7 (middle school) has been selected to participate in this. Dhonsorus parents were at first very reluctant to heed to the request by the chool headmaster, but since then dhonsoru has shown exceptional performance in his normall term exams and as well as sat a vitual exam of the same standard as students studying in singapre ( speciall assistance from the department of education singapore) and passed both with a average of 89%. after attending the virtual classes dhonsoru has been exposed to areas of education that were previosly un available to even the big schools of male' such as history and theology. this has expanded the horizons of dhonsorus perspective as to what this world we live in, and he now planns to do social behavioural science in his batchlors program. dhonsorus vitual class room is made up of avatar teachers, each of these animated teachers have their own persanality of teaching and responds in audi visual communication to typed in questions, while the virtual classrooms are in session there is also a human moderator in the hall ( former class teacher). If students come to a road bock in trying to communicate with the avatar the moderator assists them, and if the occation arises calls the virtual classroom(R) technical base in Perth australia, there is a permanent voip phone line provided in each class room so communicating with the technicall divition does not cost the local scool at all. the maldivian telecommunications companies have both contributed to this project by subsidising thee monthly lease of the internet acess, as well as the island fishermans fund has granted a RF 5 000 for buying a laser jet printer and a years supply of cartriges for the class room in addition to the funding recived by UN.
The local atoll newspaper visited the vitual classroom and took pictures and had interviews with students, parents and staff and the next weeks editorial would get frnt page coverage of the trip. The island chief said the project was a model of how maldivians in remote islands could integrate modern technology and bring in new blood to the outer atolls of maldives. There are also talks with a company in India to hire a dozen program writters who would work from these islands via the internet. At the first phase 6 Indian writers would spend 3 months in the islands working alongside maldivians and then they will eventually be replaced with all maldivian staff, speciall consideration would be givien to people applying who lived in the atoll till they were atlest 18 years old. local busess owners are excited about this projects because highly trained professhional staff in the company would be using local shops and hotels and this would boost the islands economy and have another lifeline oth
