The government is to have a national vision and strategy for eLearning by the end of this year, Investment, Industry and Information Technology Minister Austin Gatt told a heads of school seminar on information and communication technology (ICT) in education.

Dr Gatt said eLearning was about ICT and about learning, two functions that were compatible, and their compatibility was essential to the delivery of a better and inclusive learning experience for students.

“When we speak about ICT in schools, we’re not limiting the reference to the training of ICT in schools. We’re referring to the use of technology to deliver our lessons to children, who recently were called, in a very appropriate way, as being e-natives, in the sense that they expect to do and get everything from their computers.”

Dr Gatt stressed that Malta could be first in Europe when it comes to the use and distribution of ICT in schools. This was not an issue of investment in hardware, it was about the change of culture and mentality that had to come about. It would mean having to start doing and preparing lessons and lectures in a different way.

It was the government’s intention that all classrooms would become e-Classes and this had to be complemented by the teachers who had to start delivering the lectures and become e-Native too.