After hearing about the laptop project, I went to see for myself

What you need to know:

  • I visited two primary schools - Kirege and Ikuu - and have some mixed results.
  • Basic features like predesigned or in-built exercises and assignments, which would have helped learners and teachers assess learning outcomes in a standardised manner, were missing.
  • We must try at all costs to avoid the "Nyayo milk syndrome".

It’s been a while since we checked on the Digital Learning Program (DLP), commonly known as the laptop project.

With elections fast approaching, the government may have ticked this project as done and delivered but we need an independent opinion.

So last week, I made my maiden trip to the beautiful ridges and valleys of Tharaka-Nithi County to see for myself how far this project has gone.

I visited two primary schools - Kirege and Ikuu - and have some mixed results to report. The Tharaka-Nithi County DLP is being implemented by the company Technology Partners under the JKUAT Consortium, one of the two final winners of the project, the Moi University consortium being the other.

HUNDREDS OF YOUTH

Technology Partners is in charge of rolling out learning and teaching devices across all primary schools in the county, while making sure that teachers are also trained. With over 300 primary schools, the company must deliver and install over 8,000 devices. 

They must also train at least three teachers per school to enable them to kick-start the project.

Clearly, they needed some strategy to successfully pull this off and chose the local empowerment approach, where they involved youthful techies from the county to deliver on the laptop promise.

Each primary school was assigned between two to three youthful ICT workers to deploy, train and support the installations. 

They would also form the first line of ground support in case the teachers faced challenges with the devices. This is truly transformative.

To get hundreds of youth involved in the ICT economy at the regional and county levels is the only way we can truly say that Kenya as a whole, rather than Nairobi, is a hotbed of innovation.

Additionally, the prerequisite of electrical power delivered to primary schools is a bonus to the project, since it means neighbouring communities can also tap into the power supply.

AUTOMATIC GRADING

Enough of the good news, now let’s get into the challenges. Top of the list is digital learning content. 

Whereas I am not a specialist in early childhood education, the digital learning content was truly below standard, judging purely from a technical expectation of what interactive learning material can deliver.

The depth and interactivity of content was below the hardware ability the digital learning devices possess. Basic features like predesigned or in-built exercises and assignments, which would have helped learners and teachers assess learning outcomes in a standardised manner, were missing.

One would have expected some exercises immediately after each lesson is completed, but these were not provided for, forcing children to miss out on one of the greatest advantages of digital learning.

Furthermore, such digital exercises often have provision for automatic grading, which saves teachers hours of effort that would otherwise have been spent marking and recording hundreds of pupil assignments.

The KICD (Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development) is in charge of this component and they perhaps need to find a model where they engage private sector content publishers in an open, competitive mechanism to supply the best educational digital content.

SUDDENLY WITHDRAWN

Another challenge going forward relates to sustainability. Who is going to pay for the Internet access, power supply, security provision and maintenance costs for the devices?

We must try at all costs to avoid the "Nyayo milk syndrome". Then President Moi launched a great idea of meeting the nutritional needs of lower-primary schoolchildren through a free milk programme.

As one of the beneficiaries of the programme in the early 1980s, I remember we had fun while the free milk project lasted, but were not of age to ask questions when it was suddenly withdrawn.

Years later, we came to learn that the free milk flowed at the expense of a parastatal, the then KCC (Kenya Cooperative Creameries). Once KCC collapsed, so did the free milk programme.

How can we avoid the "Nyayo milk syndrome" in the laptop project? We must think seriously through sustainability by imagining a future with economic synergies between device providers, content providers, public schools and the government.

At the moment, the economic model is one-directional, with little or optional contribution from recipient primary schools, a classic pattern that could end in the "Nyayo milk syndrome".

This problem must urgently be addressed in order for us to sustain the benefits of the Digital Learning Programme into the foreseeable future.

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya, Faculty of Computing and IT. Email: [email protected], Twitter: @jwalu