Teachers, whether novices or veterans, can always learn something new to match with the digital teaching, or self-learning. Technology is becoming irreplaceable.
That is the message from KT radio’s EdTech Monday program held on 26, February 2024.
EdTech Monday is a joint initiative of the Mastercard Foundation Centre for Innovative Teaching and Learning in ICT and the Rwanda ICT Chamber. The show is about using technology to improve education and learning in Rwanda.
“A teacher who says that he/she finished learning; that is not a teacher of this generation. This is where technology stands. It is irreplaceable,” Dr Irene Ndayambaje, Senior Lecturer at the University of Rwanda, College of Education (URCoE) said.
“ However,teachers who use technology to deliver lessons should be careful. There is a possibility for lessons not to be impactful. Teachers have to prepare lessons thoroughly, monitor whether each student has done exercises,” he added.
This program (EdTech Monday edition) is the first of this year- 2024. It is themed “The impact of comprehensive teacher training programs and professional development resources on advanced digital learning.”
It is aimed to develop skilled human capital needed to transform Rwanda from an agrarian country to a middle-income country.
“We have partnerships with the University of Rwanda and some schools to train teachers. Recurrent training helps them to move with technology trends. Basically, we train them with hand-son software,” Uwamariya Mariette, Assistant Trainer, eShuri.
“We are trying to close the technological gap for teachers who want to deliver digitally. Teachers are at different levels of tech skills; we train them accordingly,” she added.
Rwanda is taking aggressive measures to create its fintech ecosystem. Most of the sectors are fighting to deliver some services online including education sector, through a program known as “blended learning”.
“We have few people with robotics capabilities; on the level of training others. The demand was so high, we couldn’t train students. We decided to train teachers to forward those skills to their students,” Lambert Niyonsenga, Science and Robotics Educational Specialist at Creativity Lab Rwanda said.
“So far, we work with 500 schools. The number is big. We train science and technology teachers because they have the ICT skills where we can start. We have the curriculum for that,” he stated.
