AMMAN — The Ministry of Education confirmed Monday that the Kingdom and Egypt are to announce a joint e-learning initiative to connect the schools in ... 

AMMAN — The Ministry of Education confirmed Monday that the Kingdom and Egypt are to announce a joint e-learning initiative to connect the schools in both countries.
"Students will interact with their peers in Egypt through an advanced e-learning network using up-to-date technologies in this field, " Ministry of Education Spokesperson Ayman Barakat told The Jordan Times.

The Jordan News Agency, Petra, quoted Egyptian Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology Tariq Kamal as telling the Egyptian press in Germany, that Jordan and Egypt would announce the initiative during the World Economic Forum to be held in Dead Sea in May.

Kamal is currently on a visit to Germany to attend CeBIT 2005 in Hanover.

"The initiative is designed to follow the example of advanced countries in providing students with the opportunity to use state-of-the-art technologies, exchange information with other students and modernise learning techniques," Barakat added.

Several local and international institutions specialised in the field of communications and IT will participate in implementing the initiative, Barakat said.

During the 2003 World Economic Forum, the Jordan Education Initiative (JEI) was launched to serve as a model of effective ICT-enabled learning that can be replicated and implemented across the Kingdom as well as other countries in the region.

The government-sponsored initiative is a project to transform 96 schools into model facilities where technology is at the service of learning and teaching and IT is perfectly integrated in education.

The JEI also seeks to build the capacity of the local IT industry for the development of innovative learning solutions in partnership with world class firms.

Companies who have committed to participate in the project include CISCO Systems, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Siemens and Sun Microsystems, among others.