Monday 18 / November / 2024
Muscat: A former teacher from Indian School Muscat has been elected the new Chairman of the Board of Directors of Indian Schools in the Sultanate of Oman.
Dr Sivakumar Manickan worked as a senior school physics teacher, before being promoted to the head of the physics department at ISM, a position he left in 2010 to join Oman Dental College as the head of e-learning.
He was in charge of developing the online learning environment for all Indian schools across Oman, called the ISO-VLE (Indian Schools Online Virtual Learning Environment), which has found great use during the COVID-19 pandemic in enabling more than 45,000 students in the country to continue their education.
“I spearheaded this project and trained teachers to handle online-based teaching,” he explained. “Immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic began, our schools were able to quickly adopt these new technologies and deliver uninterrupted education. Almost a full academic year has been completed through this mode of teaching, and schools are now returning to blended learning with a mixture of online and onsite teaching sessions.
“School education is now being redefined with the growth of artificial intelligence, robotics and biotechnology,” added Manickam. “Preparing our children for such a rapidly changing world, post COVID-19, requires relevant and modernised education. This does not mean, however, discarding traditional teaching techniques and replacing them with computer screens.
“What it does mean is that we must deliver to our children core subject knowledge in a way that incorporates this ever-developing technology, which is efficient and engaging, in order to equip them with the knowledge and digital skills that the future will demand.”
