Forty seven global organizations have come together to pitch in their expertise free of charge and participate in the Jordan Education Initiative, which aims at developing an e-learning environment and piloting it in 100 “Discovery Schools”.

Jordan is a country with limited resources. Tourists might visit the country’s many ruins and oases in the desert, or they may float sunny side up on the Dead Sea, searching for that cure-all panacea that the heavily salted waters at the lowest point on earth are famous for. But educationally, Jordan is flying high and making waves. His Majesty King Abdullah II and her majesty Queen Rania have together set public education on a course that has called on the ports of many world bodies and organizations that were more than willing to help sail the country into 21st Century learning.

Some forty seven organizations including Computer Associates, Microsoft, Intel, France Telecom/Jordan Telecom, USAID, HP, IBM, Siemens, the British Council, Dell and Cisco are participating in the Jordan Education Initiative (JEI), the first of the Public Private Partnership projects that have sprung roots in Qatar, the UAE, Egypt and very recently Bahrain. The JEI saw birth in June 2003 at the World Economic Forum at Davos and is the ICT core component of the Education Reform for a Knowledge Economy (ERFKE) - a $380 million commitment by the Jordanian government to develop a national education strategy from pre-primary to secondary education.

Private  organizations have invested around $25 million, in addition to around $6 million from the Jordanian government. “The concept of the JEI actually came from the Ministry of Information and Computer Technology (MOICT) in Jordan with the idea of partnering with  multinationals and donors who are willing to support Jordan and contribute in kind, cash or material to improve public education in both the classroom and the administration,” said Haif Bannayan, Executive Director of the JEI. Before 2002, the Ministry of Telecommunication and Post had nothing to do with technology, but with the MOICT came a new concept and policy body for entry into the information age in Jordan that included the formation of an e-government, the national broadband network and e-initiatives, the biggest of which being the JEI.

In parallel to deploying technology and bringing innovation in the classroom, the JEI also aims at jumpstarting the local private IT sector in Jordan. “Many local companies have developed their skills, built their capacity and produced products that were actually used in education locally and regionally as a result of collaboration with international companies,” Bannayan said. For example Rubicon, a local IT Jordanian company, worked hand in hand with Cisco which financed the development of the e-math curriculum for JEI. Rubicon has since acquired enough expertise to develop the e-science curriculum for grades 1-12  with the help of financing by Fastlink, a subsidiary of ORASCOM Telecom, the largest GSM network operator in the Middle East and Africa. “At the end of the day, we do want companies like Cisco and Microsoft to be in Jordan, because they bring in a wealth of IT expertise which also lays the ground work for their businesses to spread in the country,” Haif indicated.

There are in fact five curricula already developed: Math, Arabic, English as a Foreign Language, Science and ICT. The development of Computer Literacy curricula was fully funded by Microsoft. “The idea was not to take ready-made curriculum and then tailor it to Jordan, but rather to build capacity in Jordan’s ICT sector. That’s why we want the local companies to start this experiment of producing e-content, which is a first in the Middle East,” said Rana Madani, JEI’s E-Curricula Track Manager. But improving the level of education using ICT as a tool is not a project you can immediately implement on the scale of Jordan, which has more than 3000 schools. “The leaders chose 100 schools and called them Discovery Schools. Why discovery? Because we want to discover what works and what doesn’t,” Madani explained.

Jordan is in fact building a national broadband (Fiber Optics) network aimed at connecting the nation’s 3000 schools. “There isn’t enough frequency to operate the WIMAX (Worldwide  Interoperability for Microwave Access) system. The bandwidth it provides falls short of the 100 megabits that schools need,” Bannayan said. Fiber Optics however will not reach certain remote areas where few schools are built or where it is not feasible economically, thus necessitating wireless technology there. “Fiber Optics will end up being the infrastructure for Jordan, with the vision that some companies might come in and want to utilize the network,” Bannayan clarified. According to Madani, the current test bed of 100 Discovery Schools are connected via Wireless LAN and soon on the broadband, in preparation for providing teachers with laptops and projectors and training them on producing e-content based on the curriculum of the Education Ministry. The new school books are furnished as part of the ERFKE program which developed the new curriculum. “The JEI is applying the new concepts in the form of e-content. The discovery process involves recognizing achievements from teachers who implement the e-curricula using the new methodology innovatively,” Madani said.

The e-content deployment   will go through different stages. A company might decide they want to work on four phases such as grades 1-3, followed by grades 4-6, 7-9 and 10-12. In the ‘Pre-Pilot’ phase, the JEI only chooses six schools and one teacher from each school to become part of the implementation. “For instance, I want to go to the science teacher up to 4th grade. I only choose one teacher and I apply the program for at least 1 to 1 1/2 months, taking the feedback about the content to see whether it was user friendly, easily accessible, or if it contained  mistakes and then we refer back to the company which produced it, all in collaboration with the MoE,” Madani said. Following this period, the JEI expands the sample by going to 14 schools, but at that stage every teacher is part of the experiment. “This pilot should last at least one semester and some companies choose to implement it over the whole year, and we have no problem with that. They perhaps want more feedback to improve on content before we move into the roll-out phase of 100 schools,” Madani said. But even at the roll-out level, e-content is restricted to teachers who participated in the program through the MoE platform called Eduwave in order to minimize the error in both e-content and teaching methodology. 

Since 2001, Manal Qaddoura has been the Principal of Shifa’ Bint Owf all-girls High School, one of JEI’s Discovery Schools located in an underprivileged area of Amman’s old neighborhoods. Qaddoura is the type of person the JEI was tailor-made for.  This self-motivated, forward-thinking college graduate with a diploma in School Management was during her career in charge of 1600 students, 30 sections and 70 teachers. She had a computer before anyone had asked her to take ICT courses and acquired an ICDL diploma. Qaddoura and a small number of her teachers participated in the JEI computer training program offered by Intel and other IT companies. “We hear that the world is like a small village, that technology is used in education and we are being introduced to these concepts but the implementation really depends on our capacity and willingness to learn something new. Some people don’t like change,” Qaddoura said from her modest office. The school has 28 teachers, 650 students and 3 computer labs equipped with 60 computers and one room with an interactive whiteboard - one of four donated by Smart Technologies and Hitachi to the JEI board. “We were given a training session on how to use the board and suddenly our Social Studies teacher gave a wonderful presentation on strategic water locations in the world. We recognized what is computing entirely through the JEI,” Qaddoura said.

The initiative in fact breathed life into the proud but understaffed school. “I am very hopeful for the school and very thankful for JEI for they not only provided us with a large number of computers and training courses, but they also added a human touch in their dealings with us,” Qaddoura said. Budget cuts forced the school to lay off seven staff teachers and increase the numbers of students to 40-45 on average in each classroom. “While our relationship with the MoE was mostly through correspondence, the JEI and their partners did a needs assessment on the number of teachers, students, facilities and level of training and supported our many queries in a very personal and candid manner,” Qaddoura said. The teacher training is being provided by international companies as a free contribution to the Discovery Schools. “They would select teachers or schools and perform the training, which in itself has to be needed and/or unique;” said Luma Atallah, JEI Projects Coordinator. The JEI’s focus is to introduce innovation. As for introducing new curricula, that might also happen. “Already some companies are approaching us saying we have this curriculum to introduce to the ministry. That would be our role. If it has value, we will introduce it to the MoE and pilot it. It could be vocational, but although five of our discovery schools are vocational, we haven’t gone that route yet,” Atallah said. Based on the training it received, Shifa’ Bint Owf was able to computerize its own math courses. E-math, according to Qaddoura, enabled the student to learn on the spot, critically think on his/her own and leave school with less homework. “We dream of the time when our students send their work and projects over the internet and although the option is now available, it’s hard to implement because of the economic conditions here,” Qaddoura said. Other teachers have learned how to teach e-English but these achievement didn’t come without resistance from some teachers who felt threatened by technology. Teachers who instruct for many years usually stop preparing for the lesson, but now they are faced with the prospect of having to prepare a lesson plan with student-centered strategies and with e-content. “Teachers are now worried. They were in a safe cocoon and now we‘re saying that your methods are no longer applicable, which for many teachers is something of a scary proposition especially if they are not comfortable with technology or feel that the student’s role should be minimal” Madani said. But the idea of the JEI is not really to have an e-class. “The idea caters to blended learning with the decision to use technology always being the teacher’s prerogative. If I were a teacher and I felt that this new content is not adding value to the class, I wouldn’t use it,” Madani said.  Despite training on developing e-curricula and e-exams, one of Shifa’ Bint Owf’s teachers flatly refused the new project. “Not everyone strives to develop him/herself, but we’ve had success with others who did train and once every two weeks, one JEI session-attending teacher starts giving workshops to other sections and of course the inquisitive children are the most receptive to the new technology,” Qaddoura said. 

The other major challenge for the JEI lies in managing the speed and pace of implementation. “My challenge is to manage the public sector which is interested in a good product with minimal mistakes, while at the same time manage the private companies who want to complete the project expeditiously and refocus on selling abroad,” Madani said. She said that for many of the existing partners, Jordan is not the ultimate goal, but rather a national commitment. “The government is careful and the private sector  wants  to move on. Making everyone look from the same angle and reducing the frustrations on both sides is not easy,” Madani said. The MoE has according to Atallah changed a lot since JEI started. “They had a curricula department but after the JEI was introduced they created a digitization department within it, to evaluate and give feedback,” Atallah said. Bannayan said that there are systems in the public which if utilized properly can become efficient. “His majesty’s vision is to develop a knowledge economy with the support of certain ministers who are trying to achieve this change, like HE Education Minister Dr. Khaled Toukan who is a real supporter of the JEI,” Bannayan said.

The JEI will transform itself into an NGO and help balance the private sector’s need to introduce new technology or curricula and the public sector requirements. “The big challenge today is to roll out the project which is not before the broadband network is installed,” Bannayan said.  Delays in installing the Fiber Optic network has pushed the roll-out phase three years further than expected.  At the completion of the first three years of the JEI, private partners said that they had fulfilled their obligations and that it was up to the government to replicate. “We felt the education sector still required further support at the roll-out stage and her majesty also said she would like to see it developed further,” Bannayan said. Is there a limit to patience? To giving? That’s up to the partners to answer.

A Blue Print For Success

The JEI is a broad, ambitious blueprint that uses ICT as a catalyst to change the education system and accelerate Jordan’s development into a knowledge economy. It has a flexible structure that allows for partner-driven innovation and interpretation of project objectives, creating a “market place” for ideas and a test-bed for experimentation.

There exists a holistic educational policy underlying the program objectives that takes into account the need for change at the curricular, teacher, and administrator levels. Its Fast-track approach allows for rapid-paced change in a small set of schools, freeing the program from the constraints of roll-out feasibility.

It has set itself the following goals:

• Unleash the innovation of teachers and students through the effective use of ICT

• Build the capacity of the local information technology industry

• Leverage national government commitments with corporate citizenship to build a model of reform.

• Reach 100 Discovery Schools containing 50,000 students and 2,300 teachers

• Manage a controlled environment that does not limit innovation

E-Curricula Development

Five e-curricula were developed:
Math Online, E-Science, ICT

e-curricula, English Online, and

Arabic Online.

The e-curricula development aims to support the Government of Jordan’s vision of building a knowledge economy by providing lifelong learning opportunities to young entrepreneurs and communities across Jordan.

Key Accomplishments

• Attracting 45 partners including global and local leaders working together to achieve the JEI objectives in partnership with the Government of Jordan

• Direct contributions from global and local partners have reached US$25million

• Emergence of several local companies that have the technical expertise to undertake technology ventures.

By Hadi Khatib