Mr Mazlan Bin Hasan participated as volunteer in the SVO Specialist Team (IT in Education) Project in Bhutan 2006. The aim of the project is to provide training in the form of workshops for the lecturers at Paro’s National Institutes of Education (NIEs), and assist in the design of the new Bhutanese IT in Education syllabus in this training of trainers project.  Here is an account of his experience in the Bhutanese kingdom.

A Snapshot of Bhutan Working with the Bhutanese was a joy mainly due to their openness in learning new things and level of excitement. Although Bhutan is a developing nation, you will be surprised at the advancements they have made in terms of technology for teaching and learning. At the College of Education, Paro, the school is equipped with Internet connected through satellite and their computer labs are so spacious and warm.

Being a part of the SVO Specialist Team was just fantastic. Apart from the chance to visit one of the most beautiful countries of the world and sharing my knowledge on technologies for teaching and learning, the visit taught me and opened my eyes to many things we take for granted daily.

The participants, mostly lecturers from College of Education, Paro and Samtse, showed tremendous interest and genuinely wanted to learn as much as possible in order to equip their student teachers with the skills needed to run their IT programmes when they are posted in schools.

Communication was not a problem as most Bhutanese speak English and English is also the language used in schools. The lecturers are also well-informed with many having studied abroad in countries such as Canada, Australia and USA.

My visit there was to impart my knowledge and skills in multimedia design. The industry-certified applications for multimedia authoring today are quite complex as each software is built with many functions to serve all levels of users from beginners to intermediate to experts.

I shared with them various tools from complex systems to simple-to-use ones which are available for free. A couple of hands-on workshops were conducted particularly on complex applications such as Adobe Flash multimedia authoring program and Photoshop, a graphic editor program. Besides just teaching the functionalities of the applications, they also learnt ways as to how these applications can be used for creating of materials for teaching and learning.

Overall, it was an enriching experience for me as a volunteer. I was happy that I was able to share my area of work. The Bhutanese hospitality and the SVO team I was with made the whole process so easy. I have to thank SIF for making the visit such a memorable one. My country manager has so much knowledge of Bhutan that one would think he’s a Bhutanese, as echoed by some of the natives we met.

I have definitely grown from this experience, though it was just a short one-week trip. The values and beliefs upheld by the country right down to each individual is so apparent and, coupled with their preservation of nature, makes Bhutan a magnificent and magical place to visit. If you are up there, have a chat with some of the school children and you will be pleasantly surprised by their charming accent, lovely smile and eloquence in holding a conversation at such a young age. Heavenly!