Federal government has prioritised transforming lab-based ICT training to meet contemporary pedagogy requirements by teachers, hinting on leveraging ‘windows’ provided by Microsoft technologies.
Mrs. Uwem Asomugha, director of ICT, Federal Ministry of Education at Microsoft-BETT Middle East Forum held in Abu Dhabi, recently, said that the Ministry which faces multifaceted challenges in digitalising teacher and learning processes in the country, is trying to leverage the technological prowess of companies like the Microsoft which transforms the process.
“What we have been doing is lab-based ICT training for teachers, but the world has gone beyond that; every teacher should have a mobile device. That is one of the areas we are lacking,” she said.
Speaking on the forum, she said, “BETT is quite significant; I have always known a lot of the things been emphasised are important to improving our education system. For instance, Microsoft software have helped us a lot in driving transformation, but this forum has further strengthened the need for us to engage deeper with the company with reference to Microsoft Academy (MA) is something we are going to push forward. Whether we like it or not, our children have to compete globally. We have to ditch the idea of raising just local champions.
“We are doing quite a lot, even at the tertiary level. For instance, the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) is a software/technology driven institution. It is doing quite a lot in accordance to its nomenclature “Open”. It is delivering education through technology. We have the National Teachers Institute (NTI), which is also a distance learning institution that leverages technology to deliver on its mandate”.
She added that, although the institutions are doing very well in technological adoption, there are still some challenges.
“For instance the Nigerian Research and Education Network (NgREN), the challenge has been payment of subscription. We have the infrastructure on ground, at least 27 universities are connected but the subscription issue remains there.
“The Federal budget for Education limits us, because through that we can’t pay for the NgREN subscription. We have to be blunt about it. Almost every school has V-Sat connection, but size the bandwidth subscription paid by the Federal is limiting their capacity. Connectivity is a major issue for us, coupled with power,” she said.
