New Taipei City sets to employ cloud technology as the new educational tool
New Taipei City Government today (3/19) hosted the Forum of National Digital Learning and Cloud Computing in Education. At the forum site, teachers and students from Jianan Elementary School of Sanxia District demonstrated their use of tablet computers to learn about fireflies as a form of digital learning. New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu at the event commented that the government will promote such info-technology in the future beyond education into social welfare, health, disaster prevention, philanthropy, and environmental protection.
In his remark, Mayor Chu said the city government has been continually promoting the educational usage of tablet computers, which has long been overshadowed by its popular usage for recreational purpose. He praised that cloud technology not only makes learning free from location restriction, but also helps close the urban-rural education gap. He also stressed that he will extend the usage of cloud technology in the future to facilitate local employment, residence, and entertainment.
Although Taiwan has the advantage of advanced hardware technology, Mayor Chu reminded the public that development of cloud technology requires more than just data centers and servers, as software and application development are the real foundation of cloud technology. He said the government shall aspire to establish a comprehensive list of policies to assist private firms in developing more advanced cloud computing equipments and frameworks, and as the result reduce the network transmission cost and increase transmission speed.
Minister of State, Zhang Shanzheng, said that New Taipei City has been an exemplary role model in the field of digital computing. He hopes the success by New Taipei City can bring a boom of cloud learning to the rest of the Taiwan.