Minister of Education and Science of Georgia, Dimitri Shashkini met 110 Heads of primary classes and presented them with netbooks. These teachers passed four-day training in the basic computer skills and got familiarized with the requirements of the new National Curriculum. Training was held by the experts of the National Center for Teacher Professional Development.

Trained teachers work in the pilot schools of Batumi, Kutaisi, Zugdidi, Mtskheta, Mestia and Tbilisi. From the new academic year, the first graders of these schools will be provided with netbooks that will be used during the school year together with the textbooks as a supplementary means.

Training of the teachers of pilot schools in IT technologies still continues in order to use them in the teaching process. This time, training will be carried out by the company “Intel” on September 9-15. The main topic of the training is integration of IT technologies in the educational environment, school and home.

As the result of the trainings, teachers will be able to prepare the lessons using the computers, manage the content of the material for the school children, communicate with the school children and their parents out of school as well as create the content and share it to the colleagues and evaluate the works of the school children.

The trained teachers will support the school children to develop such skills as accessibility of content with the computer (online and offline), preparing the homework, communicating with the teachers, creating the content and sharing it (individually or together with the group).

Around 3,000 first graders will receive computers that are created based to the recommendations of international experts.  In order to make the computer easily usable for the school children, many competent specialists worked on this issue throughout the whole world.

Educational programs and cognitive computer games will be uploaded in these educational computers. Using IT technologies together with the books will make the educational process more enjoyable and easily perceivable for the first graders.

If the project will be implemented successfully, First graders of all public schools of Georgia will receive the netbooks in 2011.