That's science! Sheikh Mohammed and Sheikh Hamdan lend their voices to educational videos

The videos are part of a project that aims to reproduce 5,000 science-focused learning videos for schools across the Middle East and North Africa

Sheikh Hamdan records a narration to a science lesson for Arabic speaking children on Monday. Courtesy: Wam

School children across the Middle East could soon be watching a science lesson narrated by Dubai's leaders after they lent their voices to a regionwide programme on Monday.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, and Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai, took to the recording booths to help record educational videos for school children in Arabic.

The translation challenge project, announced last year, aims to re-produce 5,000 videos for schools across the Middle East and North Africa.

“I followed up today on the final stages of the translation challenge project, which aims to re-produce 5,000 educational videos in Arabic that suit all education levels and provide them for free to all Arab students, with the participation of volunteers from 15 Arab countries,” said Sheikh Mohammed on his official Twitter account.

This came during a visit to the Translation Factory where he followed the video production stages, from the selection of videos, translation of content, auditing and the process of adding audio to the videos.

“I volunteered to record an educational lesson in the challenge, and our goal is to provide 5,000 lessons in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and science, ..”, he said.

“Translation is one of the renaissance foundations and opens doors to accommodate all kinds of knowledge and science, and e-learning will be the fastest way to bridge the educational gap in our Arab countries.”

1,500 videos have already been completed, with more than 300 volunteers working on a daily basis to complete the project.

The initiative follows the launch of the Arab Reading Challenge two years ago that sought to encourage reading and donated and purchased millions of books for schools in the Arab world.