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Kenya's digital learning powers on despite glitches

Thursday October 20 2016
digi learning

Class One pupils in Mwangea Primary School in Voi, Taita Taveta County on Kenya’s Coast, use the digital tablets. PHOTO | LUCY MKANYIKA

As the tablets are removed from the storage area at Jomo Kenyatta Primary School in Msambweni, Kwale County, and placed on desks in the Standard One classroom, the students’ excitement is palpable.

They giggle excitedly as their eyes dart from the stranger in the classroom to their two teachers to the tablets in front of them. It takes about four minutes for the teachers to pass the tablets around the classroom.

Tablet

Halima Salim, five, smiles as she fiddles with the tablet. She tells me she wants to be an engineer, as I help her to switch on the device.

“We are very excited to have them in our class. I even took pictures of my classmates on the first day,” she says as the class is asked to switch on the devices in readiness for the science lesson.

Not all the children are able to switch on their tablets. As a result, one of the teaching assistants goes round the class helping those with difficulties. In a class of 60 learners, the assistant takes about 15 minutes to ensure that every child is following along with the teacher. With close to half of the lesson time gone in setting up the devices, the class finally begins.

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The teacher, Joyce Mochama, alternates between the laptop and the projected content on the chalkboard while her colleague Grace Mwadime walks around the class to ensure the learners are all on the same page.

“The learners have a low attention span despite their excitement. They switch off and start exploring these devices,” said Ms Mwadime.

Difficult instructions

As Ms Mochama guides the class through the lesson on the names of different body parts, she asks the learners to play the short video clip on their tablets. Some of the terms used in the instructions are beyond the understanding of the children. For instance, at this stage, telling them to “click to play video” should have said “press play.”

The content developers at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development need to consider using simpler terms in the instruction guides.

“This is one of the issues we have seen with the content, the use of difficult words to instruct the learners. The children are not yet at a level to understand these words,” Ms Mochama said.

The class comes to an end with only half of the topic covered and the devices are collected for safekeeping.

tablets

When the class comes to an end the devices are collected for safekeeping and charging. PHOTO | ALLAN OLINGO

Ms Mwadime says she would have liked to have more time for the class to ensure the learners get the value from the programme.

“For example, these tablets are only preloaded with science and social studies content. Subjects are allocated four lessons of 35 minutes each, every week, which is not enough time to fully cover the syllabus,” she says.

The laptop that the teachers use is paired with all the tablets and has all the content that the learners need. The tablets are also pre-loaded with visual learning materials that allow the pupils to view videos of the subjects that they are being taught.

“Once we get the hang of it, we should be able to give out homework, observe and monitor each student from the laptop,” said Ms Mwadime.

The Education Ministry had promised all the five subjects would be available on the tablets, but this is not yet the case on the ground.

In May, ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru said the tablets were preloaded with interactive digital learning content for Maths, Kiswahili, English, Science and Social Studies for pupils in Class One and Two.

ICT integration

“The teachers’ laptops, servers and wireless router are pre-loaded with training curricula on ICT integration, training manuals and a resource kit for teachers,” said Mr Mucheru.

However, what was delivered to the pilot school excluded the wireless routers and servers. There was also no interactive content for visually impaired pupils in the five subjects as promised by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development. 

The $175 million project did not consider the option of having a computer laboratory in all schools for keeping the devices in a permanent station.

Peter Matibo, a headteacher at a school in Uasin Gishu that is taking part in the pilot project, said a computer laboratory would reduce the time lost in setting it up the tablets. It would also make it easy for learners to use the tablets after class hours in a controlled environment.

“As it is now, they only get to use them during the specified time, which shouldn’t be the case,” said Mr Matibo.

Foundational assumptions

At another school in Uasin Gishu, one of the headteachers who spoke on condition of anonymity said he regretted that the gadgets were introduced with the assumption that the children had a good foundation at the early childhood learning stages.

“The ministry assumes that these learners have had good preparation at the Nursery level, which is not the case,” said the head teacher, while blaming poor funding of the early childhood development curriculum by the Education Ministry.

Despite growing awareness of the importance of Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) especially in public primary schools, several challenges hamper effective implementation of ECDE. These challenges are inadequate teaching and learning resources, poor and inconsistent remunerations and poorly equipped schools.

“Some rural schools are struggling to use English for the digital literacy programme,” said Mr Mwadime.

Teaching of Maths, English and Kiswahili using the digital literacy programme has stalled because two years ago, the Ministry of Education introduced the Tusome programme. This decision was made despite the digital literacy programme being in the procurement stage.

The Tusome programme is a collaboration between the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, the United States Agency for International Development and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development and will run till the end of 2018.

The aim of the programme is to improve literacy levels in English and Kiswahili for Class One and Two learners. This means that the pupils will have to wait till the end of 2018 to get these subjects on their tablets.

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