The World Bank has authorized a US$5.5 grant to establish distance learning programs throughout the nation’s public schools. The money will be used to acquire hardware and software, and provide instructor training, for a program of the World Bank’s Training Institute, which has created similar arrangements in other Asian, African and Latin American nations. The grant was announced by President Leonel Fernandez at World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C., before flying home following his U.S. tour. Fernandez pledged that 300 public schools would be technologically ready to support distance learning communications prior to his leaving office in mid-August. A World Bank delegation will arrive in SD on April 18th to launch the program. As a result of a visit he made to the University of Maryland’s Cyberuniversity, Fernandez also expressed the hope that distance learning technology at the tertiary level could also be made available to the "adult population that has demonstrated a great interest in continuing their studies." Maryland has been a leader in providing "on-line" university education, and the president will try to arrange for Maryland’s assumption of an instructional role in the Cybernetic Park being built on the outskirts of the capital. Fernandez announced yet another educational initiative, sustained via technology developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is called the "intelligent Communities" project, and will install internet centers in farming communities in order to help residents to transcend the communication barriers imposed by rural isolation, and to put them in touch with technological information about crop planting and harvesting.
