In what will undoubtedly be viewed as a massive move towards digital inclusion, at least 14,000 school children in Northern Kenya are to start accessing computing lessons for the very first time. The transformational program, launched under the Digital Learning Programme, is going to equip these youngsters with some of the most critical digital skills for the future.
A Collaborative Effort
The Digital Learning Programme is a collaborative effort spearheaded by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in partnership with Frontier Counties Development Council, FCDC, and the M-Lugha Foundation. This program sets to benefit 8-14-year-old school children in eight counties within FCDC in what will be a huge boost to the digital education ecosystem in Kenya’s vast arid regions.
Comprehensive Curriculum and Training
Over the course of the project, the curriculum in use is the Computing Curriculum- a comprehensive resource package developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. This shall be adapted and contextualized to Northern Kenya- building on the unique context of the students there. The program will offer teachers carefully developed resources such as schemes of work, lesson plans, powerpoint’s, activity sheets, homework, and assessment all supporting the new national Competency Based Curriculum-CBC.
With this in mind, to make it easier for them to understand, the key words will be translated to the local languages such as Somali, Borana, and Turkana, in collaboration with the M-Lugha Foundation. The students can, therefore, easily access the content since it reaches them in a similar form due to this localization.
Teacher Training and Community Involvement
The teacher training initiative is undertaken as part of the programme to build knowledge, skills, and confidence.” Eight government county coordinators have so far been trained by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in Garissa, Wajir, Mandera, Isiolo, Marsabit, Tana River, Lamu, and Turkana They will pass their knowledge on to 80 local school teachers using the train-the-trainer model, or ToT. The curriculum will then be taught to 14,000 students.
It will ensure that children from the rural communities are offered the same quality of education and resources as their counterparts from urban centers, for instance Mombasa where one phase of the programme was launched recently.
Addressing Regional Challenges
There is an urgent need for robust pedagogical solutions in frontier communities, said Dr. Idle Omar Farah, FCDC chief executive officer. “Climate-related disturbances have already disrupted education; droughts and floods have been devastating, further exacerbating a dire situation where there are too few teachers to go around and the physical infrastructure is decaying. It is vital that more robust pedagogical solutions be developed, putting digital literacy programmes on offer from Raspberry Pi Foundation for primary learners.
The move is being made at a very critical time when climatic change has affected the continuity of education events in the region. Through the program’s intervention for creating digital literacy among learners, these initiatives plans to mitigate these disruptions as well as preparing learners for a future defined by technology.
Leadership and Progress
While speaking at an EDTECH Summit at Garissa University, Dr. Mohammed Abdinoor, a researcher and educationist, insisted that there can be no educational progress without leadership. “Everything starts and stops at leadership. We cannot have any progress in schools, while there are no good leaders running the schools,” he said. With these words, he literally brought out the need for the sustenance of initiatives meant to reform education through strong and effective leadership.