Ammon News - PARIS Jordan Education Initiative (JEI), a brainchild of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, has been awarded the UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education.

Chief Executive Officer of JEI, Haif Bannayan received the award during a ceremony held last week under the patronage of Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa at the agency's headquarters in Paris.

This year's award focused on the theme "Teaching, learning and e-Pedagogy: Teacher Professional Development for Knowledge Societies''.

The award, shared with the Rector of the Moscow Institute of Open Education, includes diploma and $25,000 cash prize.

An international arbitration committee has convened recently to choose winners among 39 projects presented by 29 countries.

The JEI was nominated for the Prize by Ministry of Information and Communications Technology, the initiative's strategic partner and Ministry of Education, which is implementing it.

The JEI was formally launched in June 2003 at the Extraordinary Meeting of the World Economic Forum at the Dead Sea with the aim of improving the development and delivery of education to Jordan’s citizens through public-private partnerships.

It also seeks to encourage the development of an efficient public-private model for the acceleration of educational reforms in developing countries based on unleashing the innovation of teachers and students through the effective use of ICT.

The initiative also aims at building the capacity of the local information technology industry for the development of innovative learning solutions in partnership with world class firms and leveraging an environment of national government commitment and corporate citizenship to build a model of reform that can be exported to and replicated in other countries //Petra//