Kenya’s education minister has announced that his ministry is planning to digitize the entire curriculum by 2015, a move that will see the government reduce expenditure on education resources.
“My dream is to see our learning institutions churning out highly skilled personnel who are innovators and creators of knowledge, driving our economy using the latest technologies and competing globally in production of new knowledge and products,” Kilonzo said.
“ICT has now become part and parcel of teaching and learning in all levels of education starting from Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) up to university level,” he added.
The minister said that his department has given a special focus on the Education Bill, currently before the Kenya’s National Assembly, that will see the necessary legal frameworks approved for the implementation of the digitization.
The Kenya Institute of Education (KIE), the body responsible for the education curriculum in the country, has already developed content for the digital syllabus. The ICT-Economic Stimulus programme (ESP) has also equipped 1,427 secondary schools with appropriate ICT tools.
The minister said that the government was not shifting from just piloting projects, into scaling up of programmes that have positive impact on educational outcomes as well as retraining communities where the schools are situated.
In the recent past, Kenya has seen the innovation of new technologies foster the uptake of IT in schools, with the likes of eLimu and Kytabu, establishing ways to make educational content more accessible and interesting. For instance, eLimu want to deliver low cost tablets to schools, that delivers learning revision content for the Kenya primary education in a more interesting way, like 3D animations to help students grasp complex concepts.
Kytabu on the other hand is a textbook leasing application for low cost tablets that reduces the cost of a book by more than 60 percent, and users can rent textbooks on an hourly, weekly, monthly, school term or annual plan.
