Rwanda is now set to launch its premier education portal, www.educationcommons.rw which is expected to have a digital library of 2,500 education resources, tagged and displayed by subject. The portal will be launched on Thursday in an event organized by Rwanda Education Commons (REC), a project being implemented by the Academy for Educational Development’s Global Learning Portal (GLP). This is the first version of the education portal that was developed in partnership with Google and Rwanda Development Gateway Centre. The final version will be released in September this year. The portal’s primary users are teachers who will access lesson plans, teacher guides, and other materials equally relevant for learners. It also has discussion and events pages, alongside general information about education in Rwanda and the world. “An online social network has also been established to reduce teacher isolation, connecting individual educators to their peers outside their school or community,” according to Eustochie Sezibera, the Coordinator of REC. The launch of the portal will be preceded by a series of trainings for 2,613 teachers, principals and teacher educators. The training that is scheduled to begin on June 26 to July 3 will benefit 260 teacher educators, 13 principals, and 2,340 teachers. While most of the training is to be conducted online, centres without reliable electric power supply will use overhead projectors. Ends
