Workshop to enhance Arabic eContent organised by ITA

This workshop aims to discuss issues the development of digital Arabic contents industry. The event is organised in cooperation with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). Keynote speakers from the Saudi Arabia, Google and the Arab Open University will be delivering presentations sharing their experiences and initiatives.

Representing ESCWA, Dr. Nibal Idelbi, will talk about the importance of Arabic e-content, the role of the ESCWA to support developing the e-content industry in the Arab world and also the status of the e-content in the Arab world. This will be followed by Dr. Ibrahim Al-Kharashi, will introduce the 'King Abdullah initiative for Arabic content' initiative and talk about Saudi efforts in developing digital Arabic content.

From the Sultanate's Arab Open University (AOU) Dr. Moosa Al Kindi, Director of AOU and Chairman of the Omani Society for Educational Content, will the importance of educational e-content and applications used. In order to present google efforts in providing and enriching the Arabic content, Ahmed Gaballah from Google will detail on common experts utilising their new product offering Knol, to author articles for the open repository of domain knowledge.

Several members from the Government entities, higher educational institutions and Content developing companies will be attending this event that will consolidate the efforts in this direction. ITA aspires to increase Internet penetration within the country which will require significant increase in the value and volume of local content contributions from various stakeholders of the community.

A national strategic framework has been put in place to design and implement national contents projects. This includes initiatives to design and develop specialized contents and to train the Omani citizen to gain expertise in designing and managing eContent according to international standards.

ITA has also visualised that once eContent has been created it would be possible to combine it with several applications like animation, 3D, simulation and virtual lab to offer innovative services. In this direction, this workshop is very vital and having experts sharing their knowledge will benefit the audience.