4th August, 2017
The Kaduna State Government says it has commenced the training of 13,000 Senior Secondary School teachers on Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
Malam Idris Aliyu, Deputy Director, Schools, said the training was under the government’s secondary school e-learning project.
Aliyu said in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday at Kaduna ICT Hub, venue of the training, that it was to expose students and teachers to ICT in line with government plan.
He said that the training would prepare the teachers ahead of the government’s Senior Secondary School e-learning project in September.
The government had announced plans to distribute computer tablets to senior secondary school students under the e-learning project.
Aliyu said that 10,000 tablets loaded with over 300 books were ready for distribution under the first phase of the project when schools resume in September.
“We will start with SS I female students in all girls’ boarding school in the state and subsequently expand to the boys until eventually each of our SS I students has a computer tablet.
“The next batch will be SS II students, followed by SS III and hopefully by the end of 2018, all our secondary school students will have a computer tablet,” he said.
While commending Gov. Nasir El-Rufai for the laudable initiative, the official pointed out that the project would only be successful when all teachers were ICT compliant.
“This is why we are training the teachers before school resume in September, such that as soon as the student are back in school, we will distribute the tablets to the teachers and students and they will all be on the same page.”
Some of the teachers participating in the training described the initiative as “commendable” in view of students’ interest in ICT gadgets and their declining interest in reading books.
One of them, Mercy Kure, a teacher with Queen Amina College, Kaduna, said the e-learning facility would attract students and encourage them to read because of current attention given to ICT gadgets.
“The e-learning initiative is a positive investment that will surely improve teaching and learning in secondary schools, particularly now that students are losing interest in hard copy educational materials.
“For the teachers, it is a job made easy because books that are not available in libraries or even when they are there could not go round, are now uploaded in the computer and the teacher will carry every students along,” Kure said.
Another teacher, Mohammed Yahaya of Government Girls Senior Secondary School, Tudun Nupawa, Kaduna, said “the initiative will exposed students and teachers to ICT, and equally improve their skills on how to use ICT gadgets for knowledge acquisition”.