A two-day stakeholders conference of the African digital schools initiative (ADSI) in Nyamira county ended on Tuesday this week. The conference was well attended by school principals, deputy principals, board of management chairpersons and parent association chairpersons.
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| Participants following the proceedings of the workshop |
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| Moderators and panelists during the workshop. From left; Mr. George Waithaka, Madam. Lydia Onyoni, Madam. Linet Akenga, Dr. Erick Wara, Mr. Jared Monyacha and Madam. Esther Mwiyeria. |
Dr. Wara, while appreciating the positive impact brought
about the ADSI model, he introduced the fact that learners should be allowed to
use mobile phones. He argued that phones are a good source of digital content
although they may also be abused by learners. ‘’… of course in my school there
are computer students who have their own flash disks for the sake of their
projects, again this is also prone to abuse…’’ said Dr. Wara. This indicates
that mobile phones are not the only technological devices that can abused by
learners. The pressure to use these devices is there but there is also the
challenge of control. We cannot discard the fact that learners access phones
while they are away from school. According to Dr. Wara, the big challenge now
is to distinguish between those learners who want to genuinely use the mobile
phones to access the digital content and those who want to abuse them.
‘’When you left your house, did you leave the knives in the
house? did you leave the gas cylinders? Are you thinking about them?” Madam
Esther asked the participants. She went on to answer the questions that even
though we have left those items in our houses where children are, we are not
thinking about them because we know that the items will be put into good use.
She went on to remark that maybe we have not reached there with our learners
that they can be left with ICTs and put them into good use.
While addressing the participants, Mr. Jerome Morrissey, the
GESCI CEO, did not resonate with the idea of learners accessing and using
mobile phone. He cited the issues of cybercrimes and misuse of the phone by the
learner. He argued that if the learners have to use the mobile phones, then the
content that they can access should be filtered. This means that the schools
will have to be connected to a particular network which can be very costly. Mr.
Morrissey encouraged teachers to incorporate at least one 21st
century skill in each of their lessons. He argued that the 21st century skills
cannot be taught separated, they have to be include the subjects already in the
curriculum.
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| GESCI CEO, Mr. Jerome Morrissey |
Away from the debate of mobile phones, the participants,
panelists and invited guests commended the ADSI model for its numerous positive
impact it has had on the schools where it is being implemented. The invited
guests who addressed the participants included Mr. Wilson Koros (Nyamira TSC
county director) and Dr. Anyan’g (C.D.E Nyamira). Madam Esther challenged the
participating schools to find a mechanism of holding the hand of the other
schools that are not on the program so that that they can also reap from the
benefits of ADSI model.
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| C.D.E Nyamira county, Dr. Anyan'g (third from right) |
The county project coordinator, Mr. Waithaka thanked all the
participants for attending the conference and participating actively. The
conference ended with the participating schools awarded certificate of
e-confidence stage in the implementation of the ADSI model.
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| Mr. Mabeya, the school based coordinator at Gesiaga secondary school receives the school e-confident certificate from the program manger, Mr. Senthil Kumar. |
