Schools in a nutshell

"So far we have collected the names and address of about seven thousand schools all over the country," said Kashif Ali Khan, CEO, WCL, acknowledging the support by Bangladesh Karigary Shhikhha Board.

"Besides offering any necessary information on getting a child admitted in a school, a parallel idea was to familiarise the juvenile generation into the immense world of information technology and what it has to offer," said Khan, who is also very hopeful about the future prospects of the site. In time, Kashif is expectant in adding an interactive messenger on the site through which students, parents, and teachers will be able to communicate with each other. "Using the site, guardians of the registered schools will also be able to monitor their children's performance," he continued.

Individual and organisational registration can be done for free at the website, keeping the endeavor a complete non-profit attempt. All necessary financial and technical support for the site is being provided by WCL.

The site currently contains a discussion forum, where students are expected to submit problems they may be facing, and teachers' feedback is thought to be submitted in accordance. "This, along with the messenger to be launched in future, will create a common interaction ground for all parties," Khan mentioned. Additional links for browsing through all the seven thousand schools that are being deployed for the site, while the listing is sub-divided in three categories of Bengali medium, and those which follow Cambridge and Oxford syllabus respectively. It should be mentioned here that all English medium schooling in the country is attended under either one of the above two affiliations with Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

Currently some of the popular schools of the city has registered at the site, including Wills Little Flower and Siddique's. Additional links on the site serves to allow for the most updated Ordinary and Advanced Level syllabi, along with a Reading and Book List to go with the syllabus. A Knowledge FAQ contains some basic questions that students often face with their typical subjects. "We are updatiing the site regularly," said Khan, specifying on how the work on the site is still on a go.

"It is very much essential that our children know the IT edges that they live in today's world," Khan stated, citing that nurturing all possibilities of IT into a child should be considered crucial if the nation is focused on growing into a IT-oriented ground. "To allow for a IT-oriented nation, I assume we shall have to introduce the power of the net to the younger generation," Khan added.

Recently the British Council (BC) has offered a half-hour slot for WCL to display the assembly of their site at their 'education festival' next month. "This is hoped to allow us expose the credentials of the site to the parents and the teachers," Khan said, which is hoped to further take the awareness of the possible prospects that such a site has to offer among the population.

Ridwan A Kabir