(Borneo Bulletin; March 17, 2008)

BRUNEI: Brunei's Ministry of Education and ZimacSilicon Technologies Sdn Bhd (ZST) yesterday held a signing ceremony for the implementation of the School Network Infrastructure (SNI) project.

The signing ceremony of the project, which is one of the e-Education projects under the Ministry of Education, took place at the Royal Brunei Polo and Country Club Jerudong. It was witnessed by the Chief guest, Acting Permanent Secretary (Core Education) at the Ministry of Education, Dayang Hajah Norjum Haji Mohd Yusop.

Signing on behalf of the Ministry of Education was Acting Director of Information and Communications Technology, Awang Haji Abdul Rahim Derus, while ZST was represented by its Managing Director, Dato Paduka Haji Idris Haji Abas.

On hand to witness the signing ceremony were Project Co-ordinator Awang Omarali Mujah and Mas Roslee DP Haji Idris, the Director of ZST.

With the signing of the contract, ZST will be working under the Ministry of Education to implement the SNI project for 202 government schools throughout the nation.

Once the project has been fully implemented, each school will have its own Local Area Network (LAN) linking classrooms, computers labs and school administrative offices together.

A total of 31 secondary schools, 123 primary schools and 50 religious schools will be involved in the project. The project shall be implemented in phases. The first phase will commence sometime this month and the entire project should be completed by 2010.

The school network will deploy a range of manageable 3Com Gigabit and Fast Ethernet switches integrated with power protection equipment for ease of administration and uninterrupted network connectivity.

AMP fibre optics and Category 6 (CAT 6) structured cabling or wireless access points (WAP) by Proxim and Zyxel wireless controller will provide interconnectivity between buildings and desktops in the schools.

It is envisaged that with these networks in place, students, teachers and staff members will be able to enjoy reliable and quality network access to further enhance their learning experience.

The SNI project is in line with the Ministry of Education's e-Education goals and strategic theme towards quality education, which are to provide reliable and efficient ICT resources to achieve excellence in teaching and learning process, and to ensure the smooth-running of the management and administration of training institutions.

Boot camps with hands-on training will be provided for IT coordinators of schools and network administrators of the ICT Department of the Ministry of Education.

They will be taught how to manage and monitor the network, trouble-shoot, identify and remedy faults and when necessary, isolate segments of the network that is causing network congestion or failure.