The Minister for Education, Heritage and Arts, Premila Kumar today launched the Teachers’ Talanoa Platform.
This platform aims to create dialogue amongst teachers from all over the country on the Ministry’s Learning Management System.
While launching the Teachers’ Talanoa platform, Minister Kumar said, “As educators, your ideas and suggestions are needed and valued by the Ministry to enable better delivery of education to our students. This platform will allow teachers to share their ideas, views and vision which will help us transform the future of Education. I strongly encourage teachers to use this forum not only to exchange ideas but also to initiate healthy debates and discussions”.
“I strongly believe that for any organisation to flourish, it needs a strong foundation of partnership between different people in the organisation. To strengthen this partnership, my Ministry developed a platform for our teachers to engage in thought-provoking discussions, innovative ideas and healthy debates that will pave a way forward for our Ministry,” Minister Kumar said.
This is the first time that teachers will get an opportunity to come together from right across the country in an official forum to discuss new innovations in education, classroom practices, and share new ideas to make educational practices more effective, interesting, and enjoyable for the students.
The Teachers’ Talanoa platform attempts to provide a stimulating environment for teachers to discuss contemporary topics in education, increase collaboration, improve communication, help drive usage of online collaboration tools and seek assistance and support.
With over 13,000 teachers in a forum, there is likely to be numerous ideas and suggestions. The Ministry will have Heads of various departments engage in this dialogue to guide and resolve issues that may also be raised. The Ministry genuinely values constructive teacher input.
The Minister emphasised that, “While we encourage an open line of communication, teachers must keep in mind the communication etiquette that needs to be maintained when communicating with each other. A set of guidelines has been prepared to help teachers to communicate effectively in this forum. I urge teachers to follow these rules to maintain a high level of professionalism.”
The Minister reminded teachers that this forum was for internal use only. Teachers should feel empowered to hold candid discussions and not misuse the forum for their personal agendas.