As Rwanda aspires to become a technology driven economy and society, high quality ICT education will potentially play a key role to train innovative professionals who can apply their skills to increase productivity, reduce digital illiteracy and solve problems in communities.
However, there are still key challenges to address for better ICT training; this is a result of mainly poor facilities, and skills shortage for some instructors.
Last week an ICT camp was held in Karongi District, Southern Province to expose young girls to technology, in relaxing environment, and hands on practice to help them consider future careers in ICT.
According to a statistics report released by RURA, the telecom regulator; in Telecom, a subsector of ICT, only 22 per cent of staff in the industry is female while 78 percent are male as of March 2015.
Before the Tech camp was known as ‘Tech Kobwa’, teachers from 10 schools were equipped with new technology skills, effective pedagogy and facilitation skills that they can use to improve teaching and transfer ICT skills to other students.
Théogene Habineza, an ICT teacher from Groupe Scolaire Rugarama, a secondary school in Northern Province says they don’t have enough materials and IT equipments to better teach computers. “It’s not easy, for example to teach Internet without computers” “For example I can show them [pupils] using my phone how to use Internet”.
According to experts, teaching ICT and other technology courses require practice otherwise the learner may not understand or simply forgets.
“The government should supply some computers to schools even few,” suggests Habimana. ”If I have 40 students with 10 computers I can create groups of 4 people which can allow them at least to follow.”
Habimana added sometimes he uses laptops from the One Laptop Per Child Programme, which are designed for primary school.
This is the situation at many other schools especially in rural areas. Elisabeth Turner, a consultant at Rwanda Education Board, Peace Corps Volunteer and the tech camp coordinator, says curriculum mandates that secondary schools have ICT as a subject.
“We have schools that for secondary students have no computers, they have one laptop per child for primary students but there are no computers for them to use, so how are they learning to use computer if they don’t get to touch one?” asks Turner.
“We know at many of the schools who come [to the camp] are learning mostly by studying information, but not actually by using technology.”
One of skills learned by teachers in the camp is titled Computer Science Unplugged, which is about how to improve teaching in case of limited ICT resources.
Camp organizers hope participants will share with other teachers and students pedagogy and ICT skills they acquired.
Girls also learned electronics basics.
Laura Dilla, a professor at Michigan State University (USA), teaches secondary school girls and gets them interested in computer science and programming. She says like Rwanda most people in ICT in the USA are male.
“The idea for this camp is to try to get [girls] to realize that they are used to using phones and may be they have used computers but for them to think about the fact that they could be the people who are creating the technology that makes [the phones] work instead of just using the technology,” explained Dilla, who was a trainer.
Henriette Iradukunda, a secondary school pupil who was in the camp says at her school they have computers. She hopes to be self employed by using her computer skills after graduating. “I like Internet because it is used for searching information.”
Louise M.Hemond–Wilson, Chief Technology Officer for an IBM lab who was a also mentor in the ICT camp, trained participants on Computer and Internet Security. She said for some girls it was the first time to use the Internet.
Just as One Laptop Per Child has boosted digital literacy and learning experience at the primary school level, the secondary school level’s facilities improvement could play a big role in ICT education.
The Article was first published by Rwanda Today
