Hello All,

There is need to have an ICT Think Tank that would scope on the industry trends and making sectoral IS alignments.  For example, we have Facebook how do we make it relevant to the farmer, to the health worker, how do we make wiki relevant to education, the list is endless. The mandate of the Think Tank would be to study/research and make available its new findings to schools, colleges and other groups that would form a foundation for knowledge generation.

Students in most cases "discover" the new technologies on there own or through a source, this sort of discovery would be narrow.  And would not give them a chance to anchor it well since they lack a background. It is noted that the we use about 20% of the installed capabilities office productivity tools that we install in spite of owning them for over 3 years on our computers.

Esther wondered whether the youth are aware of the capabilities of Facebook, well they may fall within the Kenyan users of productivity software of below 20%.  I have in the past coordinated ICT projects in schools (Global Teenager Project, School Chain Project, Mtandao Africa and NetGen Studio Project), each dealing with an aspect of ICT, these students can do wonders if they are guided. This guidance must come from a different level, because going by the current syllabus the teachers must drill them to pass exams, sadly a number of them were also drilled!

Let us not castigate the products of science congress; the solar cooker could be a wonder for the student, even though repeated elsewhere.  How nice would it be if the presenter states that the solar cooker can boil water at 110 degrees through a collaboration between him/her and a Korean student using  internet resource e.g. Facebook.  We need to look at Internet as a complementing resource than cannibalising.

It is nice reading from Hon Rege about parliamentarian’s eventual registration and use of social networks, this is a clear message of adoption which is good for the industry, however, it is important to evaluate the net benefits.

How nice it would be to show teachers how time saving it is to use a portal for download and upload of learning materials.  Can proceed to class with a powerpoint presentation therefore avoiding the trouble of duster and chalk (writing and rubbing) the time saved can be used for teaching.  Sometimes we tell them we have the capacity of letting an American teacher to teach Kenyan History through a video conference!

Regards,

Sam Aguyo