I think I have probably mentioned this once already a while ago: A few years ago, I did an article on Intel's Classmate mini-netbook. When kids use this netbook, they made huge progress in learning. But, Intel emphasised, only under certain conditions: the teachers have to be trained on how to integrate the Classmate and the teaching materials on it into their lesson plan. And they had to have teaching materials developed for the Classmate and the use of digital media. If anything, using this gadget put higher requirements on the teachers. I think this is particularly important with young pupils because you effectively need to teach them how to learn first. Once they've achieved that, digital learning materials will be come a lot easier for them. That's aside from issues like having power, connectivity, and having a means of ensuring that the gadgets don't get stolen. Those brick and mortar issues are important. Bridge International Academies here in Nairobi have chosen a different approach: as far as I know, they don't use such gadgets for their kids, but they have streamlined everything in the management of the schools as much as possible to bring costs down. They invest a lot of money into their teaching materials and lesson plans, though, and also in teacher training. That allows them to keep school fees down to about the same sum that parents have to pay in 'free primary education schools' for desk fee, motivation fee etc, but provide a teaching quality that is infinitely higher. Have a good afternoon, Andrea On 12 July 2011 12:35, <bitange@jambo.co.ke> wrote:
Barrack, You can never replace the teacher. By providing content to students, you only force the teacher to be more prepared or else the student gets bored. You will enable lively discussions instead of teachers reading notes to studentsm
There are content opportunities on tertiary education especially on how to do it yourself. These opportunities lie from plumbing to carpentry. We talk about unemployment yet we have broken cistern pouring expensive water, broken sewers spewing diseases, broken furniture, broken vehicles etc.
Then there are economic opportunities in delaying consumption. How to dry tomatoes, potatoes, mangoes etc.
We must start to think beyond our selfish ends.
Ndemo.
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-----Original Message----- From: Barrack Otieno <otieno.barrack@gmail.com> Sender: kictanet-bounces+bitange=jambo.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 07:17:26 To: <bitange@jambo.co.ke> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions<kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Subject: {Disarmed} Re: [kictanet] Open Data - Where does it sit?
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