KARACHI, April 30: Speakers at a conference stressed the need for increasing use of information technology in the promotion of education in the country.

A couple of speakers were of the view that the use of IT would not only enhance the importance of education but would be useful to the society as well, while, on the other hand would help bring transparency, creativity and real time monitoring in the educational sector.

As part of the conference, which was organized at a hotel by the FPCCI Standing Committee on Information Technology in collaboration with a couple of IT companies and the federal IT and education ministries, a basic hands-on-training in IT skills was also provided to about 300 teachers free of cost.

Teachers were told about technology in classroom and how to integrate it with the process of learning and curriculum.

In her introductory remarks, Shahida Saleem, chairperson of the standing committee on IT, said that any efficient communication of good quality IT education with the students was possible only when teachers themselves were familiar with the basics of IT.

She called for an increase in the level of technology education throughout the country and keeping the teachers abreast of the new technological advancements.

Ms Saleem informed that arrangements had also been made to develop education database at as many as 150 schools at Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore. Under a pilot project, the information collected at schools in question would be pooled up at a centre, which could also be available for any third party evaluation of works done in the government sector.

Various measures were also discussed for associating educational standards with information technology.

Brig Muzaffarul Hassan, Director of DHA Education, said that IT could be used as an effective and intelligent tool of education.

Siddiq Sheikh said that IT would help in shaping the future of Pakistan.

Syed Raza Abbas Shah, Director e-government, informed the gathering about the efforts being made by the government in regard to preparation and implementation of projects under the electronic government programme.

He said that the vision was to improve productivity and efficiency within the government and to bring about transparency and accountability within the public sector.

The provincial minister for IT, Mustafa Kamal, called for an integrated and cohesive policy so that it could be implemented meaningfully for the benefit of the government and the people equally.

He said that the federal government should also have inputs from the provinces in regard to preparation of the e-governance plan as those were the implementing units and could make it meet a success.

Mashhood Rizvi of Sindh Education Foundation, Wasif Rizvi, Samina Rizwan, Salman, Naila Kassim and Rabia Gharib also spoke at the conference during the day.