{"id":108925,"date":"2020-11-22T16:59:18","date_gmt":"2020-11-22T23:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=108925"},"modified":"2020-11-22T16:59:18","modified_gmt":"2020-11-22T23:59:18","slug":"digitalization-a-way-forward-for-the-education-system-in-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/11\/22\/digitalization-a-way-forward-for-the-education-system-in-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"Digitalization \u2013 A way forward for the Education System in Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aloysius Hettiarachchi.<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Perspective from a Civil and Structural Engineer<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The\nwriter is a graduate of University of Peradeniya, which was constructed during\nthe colonial period and opened by HRH prince Philip, the queen\u2019s husband, \u2018to\nbe more open than usual\u2019 in the early 50s. The Engineering Faculty that was\nestablished there was of the same standard as world leading universities like\nCambridge, following same courses. Those who passed out and gained scholarships\nthese universities did very well topping the batches. Moratuwa Technical\nCollege also became an Engineering Faculty in early 70s.These universities\ntogether with others now attract the top scorers of A\u2019 Levels and are churning\nout engineers more than what is required for the country. Majority of top\nscorers in Engineering select Civil courses instead of Mechanical and\nElectrical Engineering which are more relevant to today\u2019s needs. Most of them\nbecome managers in public or private sector. I believe this is a waste of\ntalents as they are not able to contribute much for the country in this digital\nage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nwe look at South Korea and Vietnam we see that they have achieved high level of\ndevelopment and growth rates not through so much of expenditure on education\nbut by letting their entrepreneurs engage in digital technology and\nmanufacture. I believe we should do the same without wasting our meagre\nresources and producing jobless graduates who become a burden on the government\nafter they pass out. The introduction to digital technology, particularly the\nwiring up of electronic circuits should be started in the secondary school\nlevel itself. The world is entering into a new realm of automation and our\nyouths should be trained to be at the forefront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I give below some videos that explain the\ncurrent situation and the direction in which the digital technology is moving.\nThe organizations like BBC that introduced the BBC Micro in 80s to their\nschools (and to other anglophone countries) prompted the birth of businesses\nlike ARM and are now promoting a new technology, which is a new way of\ncomputing using an open source architecture in the CPUs. I think we too should\njoin them and get our students to build the machines of the future. I tried to\nget our university guys to work on these about four years ago by writing to\nthem without any success. And we do not hear any of the academics in them\ntalking about these new developments( like RISC-V etc)  If a thirteen year old boy can understand the\ntechnology and build his computer by wiring up the RISC-V chip, as can be seen\nfrom the third video down below, why not we get our secondary school students also\ninvolved in similar projects?.  The GOSL\nshould encourage these academics to get involved or initiate similar projects\nwithout further delay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please\nview these videos if time permits. The first one is from a Sri Lankan and the\ncomments there on shows how enthusiastic the local young ones are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n