The Board of Indian Schools in Oman has launched a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) portal to enable its schools to have state-of-the-art Learning Management System and network to share learning resources and develop interactive contents, including videos. This is expected to empower teachers to create virtual classrooms by allowing students to access learning resources and interactive videos 24/7.
The portal, isovle.net, was inaugurated by H.E. Dr. Hamoud bin Khalfan Al Harthy, Undersecretary of Education and Curricula, Ministry of Education. His Excellency congratulated the Board of Directors of Indian Schools for initiating such an innovative and student-centric approach to education.
“The ISO VLE portal will serve as an online platform that will enable teachers and students access to the best of our school resources. With this the Board aims to create learning solutions that exist beyond the confines of the classrooms where the strengths of each school is accessible to all our students throughout the Sultanate. Needless to say, this will also help make best use of global technologies and IT trends”, said Dr. Baby Sam Saamuel, Chairman, Indian School Board.
The learning resources and videos of lessons are developed by highly experienced and skilled subject teachers selected from various Indian Schools. A VLE coordinator is appointed for every school to coordinate access to the portal for staff and students. Workshops and hands-on training sessions were organised for the subject coordinators, VLE coordinators, and the Principals of Indian Schools. This is expected to bring about revolutionary changes to the pattern of curriculum transaction currently prevalent in Indian Schools by making it more innovative, student-centric, interactive, and adaptive.
The portal is hosted on a powerful virtual private server that can allow multiple concurrent users. As the portal is fully responsive, it can also be accessed via different devices like smartphones (Android or iPhones), tablets or PCs. Hundreds of videos and learning resources are available for the students’ access from their home.
In its initial phase, the portal caters to the main subjects of Class X and XII; more classes and subjects will be added on in the years to come. The portal will also have a window to promote peer group learning which will empower students to be competent in different subjects.
As the contents are developed by the teachers for the teachers, this portal is expected to help all Indian Schools in Oman to maintain high quality uniform delivery of teaching irrespective of each school’s location or availability of local resources.