Who’ll teach pupils how to use laptops?

Listening to the President’s inaugural speech gave me a fresh ray of hope – not really the laptops, but because of the focus on learning.

While I appreciate technology as a driver of development in modern-day Kenya, and its potential to change the paradigm of learning, there are several questions that come to mind. The promise is that every child joining Class One in 2014, will receive a laptop.

 From our Uwezo evidence, however, only around five per cent of schools across Kenya have a computer of any kind, and most teachers in our schools fall way below the bar of computer literacy.

The first question therefore is, will the laptop be a toy, or a learning tool, or both, and will it be for school or home use? How are we conceptualising its use, whether for home or school, and who will guide these first graders on how to use the laptops, when both the teacher and the parent, are this technology-helpless?

 Or, do we buy Sugata Mitra’s model that pupils guide themselves collaboratively in organised learning groups?

Last week, I visited one school in Central Province, which, even though the village has electricity, is yet to be connected to the grid, and I wondered to myself, if this school lacks power, how many other rural primary schools have any form of power connection?

Assuming that most of the laptops will be solar-powered, how will breakdown of both the soft and hardware be handled or will this perhaps, connect to the ‘youth-fund’ that is being established?

{John Mugo, Uwezo Kenya}