The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS), and the Open Institute have the great honor of inviting you to be part of the Launching Ceremony for the ICT Textbook in Khmer for Teaching and Learning and the Inauguration of the Low Cost Computing Research Laboratory for Education under the Framework of the Preparation of the Master Plan for ICT in Education, which will take place at the National Institute of Education at 15:00 p.m. on the 22nd January 2008, and will be presided by H.E. Im Sethy, Secretary of State, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport.

The new ICT Textbook has been developed and published with the support of the Open Institute, as part of the Open Schools Program as the reference ICT textbook for all schooling levels, teacher training institutions, and the administration of MoEYS. The Open Schools Program - a joint initiative of the MoEYS and the Open Institute to use ICT to improve the quality of education - is a three phase project that will develop and implement a Master Plan for ICT in Education. The first stage of the Program is to deploy the teaching of software in Khmer language in schools, teacher training centers and other training institutions. The second phase is to do the necessary research and planning that will lead to the drafting of the Master Plan. The last part will be the implementation of the Master Plan.

The distribution of the Textbook to all schools marks the end of the first stage of the Open Schools Program. Teachers from all uppers secondary schools that have computers (25%) - as well as educators from all teacher training centers - have already been trained to teach Khmer language computer applications. The institutions among these that are still teaching English language software will change to teach software in Khmer language.

The Low Cost Computing Research Laboratory for Education will look globally at the issue of sustainability of school facilities in developing countries. It will analyze the costs of software, hardware, electricity, maintenance, connectivity and training of teachers. It will conduct the necessary research required to ensure that the technologies which will be deployed in the Master Plan are adequate and sustainable.

For testing these technologies, the Laboratory has installed a first low-power consumption computer room at the National Institute of Education which - while being used during the coming year to train new high school teachers - will be carefully measured to calculate power consumption and study other sustainability issues.