CRI听力：Chinese E-learning Experience Popular in Africa

Hello and welcome to this edition of Africa Express here on China Radio International. I'm your host, Wei Tong.

Today we are going to focus on something new: E-learning. E-learning, or online learning is when people are studying or being taught through the internet or other digital facilities. It is a completely new way of learning, using the abundant teaching resources provided by modern information technology.

An African official says that E-learning is playing a significant role in spreading information and telecommunications technology across African countries, especially for the densely-populated rural areas with poor teaching conditions.

"One way of getting out of poverty is to promote ICT in everything we do. So unfortunately even though it is expensive, it is important that we invest in it as a way of narrowing that gap between those that are developed and countries like ours, but also in terms of narrowing the gap between the poor and the rich of this country. We cannot avoid it. And I can assure you that I think, up to this point, out of about 4,500 schools in Kenya, we must have reached at least 1,000 schools. It is still a bit of a challenge - especially in terms of getting to the very rural schools - because the divide is still there that the more privileged schools are those you find in towns and those where parents can afford to pay more money. So the big challenge for us is to really democratize ICT education in Kenya by reaching to the very poor schools, especially those in remote parts of this country. That remains a challenge."

That is Prof. Karega Mutahi from Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Kenya, speaking at the second International Conference in Information & Communication Technologies recently held in Nairobi. More than 800 senior officials from Africa attended the conference to discuss how to apply information and communication technologies in education and to spread e-learning.

The success China has achieved has drawn great attention in the conference. So, what kind of experience can Africa learn from China in promoting e-learning? Many Chinese officials have introduced projects to their African counterparts. Here is one of them.

"We have there not only visual contents; we also have the interactive systems, which allow teachers from anywhere in China, they can directly dialogue with well-known national experts."

Since 2003, the Chinese government has allocated 10 billion yuan, or around 1.3 billion US dollars in a five-year distance learning project dedicated to improving education conditions in rural areas. It is estimated that more than 100 million, that is four fifths of, rural students in China can benefit from this project. Here is Han Jun, an official from the Ministry of Education of China.

"After the completion of this project, nearly all the schools in China can be equipped with TV sets and DVD players. This will solve the deficiency of teaching faculties in rural areas. What's more, all the elementary schools in China will be equipped with satellite receiving systems to download teaching materials instead of from the internet, which is too slow. And all the junior high schools will have their own computer rooms."

Despite the fact that there are sufficient teaching facilities, many teachers cannot use them, leaving a lot of equipment unused. Han Jun points out that the urgent task is to train teachers to use it.

"At the end of 2004, a new project was launched to train elementary school teachers how to make their teaching plans by computer, how to narrow the gap between their students and so on."

Elizabeth from the Ministry of Education of Tanzania says that Africa will benefit from the new technology for education in China.

"We are learning from China how to improve education conditions in rural areas, where people can get access to fundamental education. China uses visual conference to train government officials. It is a new technology and can be used in the schools of rural areas. Since many African countries have to spend a large sum of money every year to send people to be trained abroad, if we bring in the on-line training technology, the expenditure in this aspect will be greatly saved."