Old Harbour Primary to benefit from US$50,000 ICT lab investment

Details of the three-month project were revealed Monday during an official signing ceremony at the school situated in Marlie Acres, Old Harbour.

Some 4000 square-feet of classroom space will be reconfigured to facilitate the new ICT laboratory with a capacity to hold 24 students and a tutor during a single session.

“It’s a massive investment for us at the primary level but again we believe that it is the future of our nation and it’s very important that we get the kids as comfortable with technology as we can at this early stage,” said Charmaine Daniels, CEO, Digicel Foundation.

The agreement comes at a time when Digicel Jamaica has taken significant steps to bolster its infrastructure in Jamaica’s fastest growing town through Digicel Plus, a new and improved service delivery mechanism that provides customers with more efficient and reliable internet starting at 100 megabytes per second.

This new  ICT lab to come on stream at the more than a century-old primary institution will be powered at 600Mbps, which is capable of processing large volumes of data simultaneously without any glitch.

Under the arrangement the provider will offer the service free to the school for two years.

Today’s official signing is a big deal, contends Sophia Forbes-Hall, regional director, ministry of Education, Region 6.

“It is very significant,” she said. With the rapid expansion of Old Harbour, she said, means schools within the space must be able to respond to the increasing numbers.

“With a project like this we guarantee the community of Old Harbour that Old Harbour Primary School is an option with respect to quality space,” Hall added.

The recent global health pandemic brought into sharp focus the deficiencies of the state’s education’s infrastructures as it relates to ICT, a critical area that the Digicel Foundation has resolved for the school, says George Goode, principal.

“It is a proud moment for us at Old Harbour Primary, knowing that our students will stand to benefit from this investment and that they will be more marketable as they go along throughout life, and the work industry,” said Goode.

Speaking to the press after the signing, Goode said the current generation of students are more open minded and interested in learning when technology is applied as a mode of teaching and learning.

“We have to use what they want to generate and to grab their interest and that is why this programme is important,” he said. “So going forward we are using what they are interested in to get them to learn what we want them to learn so that they can become more marketable.”

The ICT lab will certainly bridge the learning divide as “there will be less interruption as it relates to formal teaching and learning” in a seamless fashion, says Mrs Forbes-Hall. “We know for a fact that this is big, this is important. It is going to be very critical.”

The ability to produce children for the ICT industry is a critical point of note for the foundation’s chief executive officer.

“In a year or two we want to come back and see these kids. Have they grown? Did it benefit them?” noted Daniels.

“If I walk into a space and I see kids that are coding, kids that are now considering a future in computers. Are the kids moving and now thinking differently and looking at the world differently? Are the boys engaged? Because for us we have recognised through the two schools that we have done already that boys are very [interested in technology]... it's a very natural thing for them to gravitate to this. So those are some of the things we’re going to be looking at and measuring and really what are the career choices that kids are talking about now.”

Under its STEAM programme geared at bridging the digital divide, the Digicel Foundation has embarked on a mission to create 10 ICT labs in primary schools in rural Jamaica by 2025.  According to Daniels they are well on track to reach this goal, Old Harbour Primary being the third school to benefit under the programme following Harry Watch Primary in Manchester and Anchovy Primary in St James.

This is their commitment to help build Jamaica and make it competitive, she said, as the world moves into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, dubbed the Internet of Things.

Daniels said in this new technological era there is a constant demand for jobs in the industry, pointing to gaming as one such area of growing desire. The ICT sector is also known to be a very lucrative job market, she emphasised. To make this point, Daniels said one of her sons recently graduated from university with a major in computer science and is already earning a bigger salary than her.

“That’s where the world is going and so we are just excited to offer that to Jamaica,” said the mother of two boys.

Technology plays a major role in every industry these days, she further noted, including farming which many rural children and their community will benefit from in the near future.

Board Chairman, Old Harbour Primary, Romond Fisher said the school has taken the necessary steps to safeguard the infrastructure about to be built and other existing structures. Recently advanced improvements were made on its security surveillance network.

Old Harbour Primary’s ability to secure and maintain the lab was a major factor in their selection, said Daniels.

“We would have done a number of science labs over the years and there are some schools that maintain them well and there are some that don’t,” she said.

“So we try to be deliberate in the management of the school to make sure that we feel that it’s a very progressive team that really buys into the vision. Not all schools and not all principals are as open to digital as you would love.”