Page 50 - Connecting cities and communities with the Sustainable Development Goals
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United for Smart Sustainable Cities
Connecting cities and communities with the Sustainable Development Goals
Communication (internal and external, branding): Internal communication was an integral part of the
programme’s success. SMT meetings were held every two weeks to monitor and adjust the
programme accordingly. The delivery is reported and the strategic and operational decisions are
made related to the delivery of the programme.
The smart-learning programme provisioned the following innovative processes:
Smart School Transformation Implementation Process: The Smart Classroom Transformation is the
first in the region that seeks to introduce ICT in education by providing a complete transformational
process to school infrastructure and to the tools used to deliver education to students.
E-Maturity Transformation Process & Framework: A framework aimed at assessing schools on the
level of its ICT maturity and providing a clear path of progress. Schools are assessed, rated and
awarded based on this highly customized and intricate system.
E-Content Selection Process: The programme created over 3500 customized RLOs based on various
subjects and are used to provide a digital content layer embedded in the MoE digitized curriculum
books.
Smart Learning Pilot Projects Process: The pilot project process serves to help procure, commission
and evaluate pilot projects specialized for specific purposes that help explore innovative
technologies, ideas and methods in the educational technology industry.
E-Safety Processes and Procedures: This involves providing guidelines and policies for possible
technical mitigation approaches to keep students, teachers and principals safe online while accessing
the Internet using MBRLSP devices.
Smart Learning Professional Development and Training Process: This involves the provision of
technical training services offered to staff with distributed devices.
Smart School Operation and Adoption Process: This involves setting guidelines and procedures to
manage and operate the smart learning IT infrastructure, as well as to provide support and training
to schools and their stakeholders.
Smart Learning Program Management Processes: This involves supporting the effective and
successful delivery of programmes and projects. It helps manage, structure and control upcoming
programmes and projects through the Project Management Office and the various formed
committees that govern and control them.
The programme was educationally led where the ICT was used as an enabler to deliver the educational
outcomes to students. In order to deliver these outcomes, the transformation of schools was carried out by
upgrading the infrastructure, distributing devices to teachers and students loaded with specialized ICT tools
for smart learning, and equipping classrooms with smart boards.
Learning inside and outside the classrooms has been enabled through network connectivity by providing
access to lessons and content that help students test their skills using tools with interactive visualizations
that have helped improve their knowledge and skills in various subjects thus improving their learning
outcomes set forth by the smart-learning programme’s objectives.
In addition to the strong governance structure used to address implementation challenges, a number of tools
were developed by MBRSLP to ensure that the overall financial resilience of the programme could be
assessed and managed. As part of the overall MBRSLP Business Case, the following tools have been produced:
a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis;
identification of the cost and ownership of key risks.
MBRSLP developed the TCO element of the business case further, to a point where it can now be used both
to predict costs accurately over the ten years of the programme, but can also be used to manage a number
of different scenarios through the use of a dashboard with a number of switches. The sophistication of this
tool now means that MBRSLP is able to use it to forecast costs against each of these scenarios, and to
compare the overall costs of these scenarios to ensure that it can manage the programme budget effectively.
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