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Jubilee tablets make school fun for city pupils


It’s 11 o’clock on a Tuesday morning and classes are ongoing at Roysambu Primary School in Zimmerman, Nairobi County.

However, Standard One lessons are not the traditional classes one would expect in a Kenyan public primary school.

Seven-year-old pupil Yusra Mulongo switches on the luminous green, Learners Learning Device on her desk. She is excited at the prospect of using it for the day’s Science lesson.

PILOT PROJECT

Yusra’s school was one of those selected for the rollout of the Digital Literacy Programme’s pilot computer project for Class One pupils, a key pledge of the Jubilee alliance ahead of the 2013 General Election.

The school now employs a different mode of teaching for its 1,600 pupils, and is among 150 others doing the same countrywide.

In Nairobi, Ndurarua and Bidii primary schools, in Dagoretti and Embakasi respectively are among those picked.

“The criteria for selection of the schools involved in the pilot project were that from each county, there had to be an urban primary school, a peri-urban primary school and a rural school,” said Mr Victor Kyalo, Principal Secretary in the Information ministry, which is implementing the project.

Certain logistical factors, like safekeeping of the devices in schools, had to be considered as a priority and teachers and instructors trained, for the schools to be considered.

Launched on May 5 in Roysambu Primary School, the project has changed the views of many of the pupils and teachers on learning and school attendance.

PUPILS HAPPY

“The pupils are really happy about the tablets. They are always looking forward to the day’s tablet-aided lessons and would do anything to attend them,” says Mrs Lucy Muturi, a Class One teacher.

“They would definitely stay away from trouble and mischief, and work hard, if that warranted their attending the classes,” she adds.

Head teacher Sarah Nyota says she has witnessed a major change in the pupils’ attitude towards learning, generally.

Although the school has only 162 devices at the moment, Mrs Nyota says they are enough for the lessons since not all the classes require them at the same time.

Class One has 150 pupils, and with the available tablets, each learner gets to use his/her own device.

Four teachers, including Mrs Muturi, were initially trained for the project, and have already trained their colleagues.

EASY TO TEACH

“The children are more motivated and are more willing to be taught,” Mrs Nyota says, adding that the teachers also find it easy to teach.

Alongside the 162 gadgets provided by Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, and Positivo BGH, came one projector, one network server and router, and two Teachers’ Digital Devices (TDD).

The TDD is a mainframe from which the teacher can monitor and control the activities of the pupils’ devices to ensure they are all performing similar tasks.

English, Mathematics, Social Studies, Kiswahili and Science are the subjects whose syllabus has been loaded onto the devices, according to Mrs Nyota.

Despite having teaching resources for only the lower classes at the moment, teachers also use the gadgets for teaching the other classes. They prepare the lessons themselves and save them in the devices.

DOWNSIDE

The only downside of the rollout, according to Mrs Nyota, is the lack of examinable subjects such as Christian Religious Education and Tusome – supplementary reading material.

Some of the devices have also broken down, she says, but they have been replaced by the suppliers and the two subjects’ resources will be made available soon.

Emmanuel Gathukia, a Class One pupil, says: “It is a lot easier to understand lessons now, than it was before.” He says he never misses school.