Why Kenyan teachers are worried with technological advancement

Fear of jobs redundancy among Kenyan teachers has been indentified as a challenge in realization of various goals in $ 400,000 Microsoft Company and other donors’ E-learning programme initiative established at Kenya Institute of Education (KIE).

The Information Communication Technology (ICT) project was aimed to help teachers ease some of challenges they face in their teaching career.

East and Southern Africa Microsoft education programme manager Mark Matunga said several years since digital curriculum development programme was set at KIE, partly over 20,000 teachers have been trained not only on basic ICT skills, but also on ICT integration.

Speaking during Pan-African Innovative Education Forum in Mombasa’ Aga Khan  Academy, Mutunga(left) hinted that United State of America International Development Agency (USAID) and Kenya education ministry is also funding the project where Microsoft was able to subsidize software licenses to all the public schools in Kenya.

Lack of adequate facilities among public schools is also mentioned as hindrance to promotion of E-learning in the county where school managers give great priorities to improving physically structures.

The government is also challenged to develop policies that will favour development of e-learning is schools as lever of teaching and teaching in the county public schools.

The Microsoft East and Southern Africa education programme manager noted that the problem is to be blamed for return of Sh 1.3 billion allocated towards development of ICT programme in school back to treasury last year.

Microsoft Academic and citizenship manager in Africa Ntutule Tshenye said the company has a long way to go in developing soft ware to ensure learners with disability are accommodated in ICT learning programme.

 He said the company will in future target development of soft ware that would enable visual impaired students take lessons through voice recognition recorded data.  

Mr Tsenye further noted that the company has paid great attention in developing windows and offices from English to various Africa languages.

The move is aimed at providing E-learning education services developed in CD’s through the use of computers and as well enable students enroll for distance learning programme.

He said the fear is mainly dominated in schools in the countryside where dozen of computer laboratories are locked and the gadgets wrapped up in dusty rooms.

Mr Mutunga said the noble project is aimed at transforming education in the 21st century through eLearning without compromising its quality.

Teachers through the digital contents programme would easy organize their better especially in lessons planning and scheme of work drafting and further save the work for future reference.

They were also to utilize the programme to advance academically by enrolling in institution of high learning offering E-learning education courses across the globe.  

Microsoft also partnered with Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) to develop Digital Content that is mapped onto to the Kenyan National Curriculum but only 40,000 teachers have opened emails with KIE to access its contents.