eLearn Punjab – Pakistan’s First Online Repository of Free Textbooks

The idea that technology can revolutionize education is not a new one. In this age of fast internet availability and the access to more affordable computers and smartphones, the teaching and learning experience can be further facilitated and enhanced digitally.

eLearn Punjab is a brilliant new initiative taken by PITB that aims to facilitate and encourage the use of educational technologies by providing digitized content. The portal will offer digitized books, relevant supplementary resources, and online assessment tools for students and educators.

“eLearn.Punjab is an important component in Punjab’s education roadmap” stated the Chairman of PITB, Dr. Umar Saif. He further added,

“For the first time in Pakistan, we are making our textbooks freely available online, augmented with a lot of supplementary material”.

While the educational portal’s target audience is the students (and teachers) of grades 6 to 10, currently, just the digitized versions of science and mathematics text books for 6th to 10th grades are available, along with links to supplementary material available over the Web. The site already features around 50 self-developed animated tutorials.

PITB plans to introduce online self-assessment features as well as centralized course and content management tools for public schools in the future. The platform would also crowd-source content from its users, which will make textbooks richer and enhance the overall learning experience. The official states that it also encourages private sector entities and international agencies to explore, contribute, and collaborate with PITB in this regard.

What e.Learn.Punjab offers is more than just dry designated course books, it is making education fun by adding interactive content, videos, assessment tests and even games. This is a good news for the parents and teachers that are constantly concerned about the students’ involvement in studies as this portal will help a lot in building their interest in the topics of their curriculum.

Since it’s recent launch the site has quite a big amount of traffic influx, with over half a million hits. This proves that the people of Pakistan are widely interested and curious about e-learning opportunities. The idea looks promising so far and TechJuice hopes that PITB continues working on the content and quality of this portal, which is first of its kind in Pakistan.