The writing was already on the wall for E-school
Feb 12, 2007
SIR — The problems of the E-school project are just one manifestation of the dangers of politicising every single development in the country!
SIR — The problems of the E-school project are just one manifestation of the dangers of politicising every single development in the country!
I had a lot of optimism in this project and took it upon myself to offer my team — the SchoolsFora — to the e-school team to share any challenges involved in similar projects but alas! The political drive outweighed logical reasoning and when we turned up for the launch at Bugulumbya SS, the writing was clearly on the wall that the project would fail.
The choice of location for the launch was politically motivated, hence all the eminent challenges to be faced were ignored. These included lack of electricity yet the project depends on the availability of power.
The students and the community were more politically drummed up (as was evident from their songs) than understanding of the potential of the technologies that had been brought to their rural community.
There was lack of training for students and teachers — the little training offered was by an expatriate who knew little about Uganda’s education system. A completely illiterate set of users cannot be project champions.
Similarly, there was lack of relevant academic content tailored to Uganda’s academics – I still think the e-school is not an original idea of the implementers, hence the tendency to emphasise technology and not what technology will support — the academics.
The re-launch, which took place at Kyambogo College, corrected some of the mistakes, but then the real challenge at hand has never been grasped — what is in it for students beyond technology?
The other countries participating in this initiative have advanced. Some of the sponsoring partners have never looked back since that ill-fated launch, and information available indicates they are relocating their resources to ‘more serious’ Rwanda.
All is not lost however, and there still exist brilliant ways of archiving the core objectives.
Simon C. Waibale
cswaibale@yahoo.com
I had a lot of optimism in this project and took it upon myself to offer my team — the SchoolsFora — to the e-school team to share any challenges involved in similar projects but alas! The political drive outweighed logical reasoning and when we turned up for the launch at Bugulumbya SS, the writing was clearly on the wall that the project would fail.
The choice of location for the launch was politically motivated, hence all the eminent challenges to be faced were ignored. These included lack of electricity yet the project depends on the availability of power.
The students and the community were more politically drummed up (as was evident from their songs) than understanding of the potential of the technologies that had been brought to their rural community.
There was lack of training for students and teachers — the little training offered was by an expatriate who knew little about Uganda’s education system. A completely illiterate set of users cannot be project champions.
Similarly, there was lack of relevant academic content tailored to Uganda’s academics – I still think the e-school is not an original idea of the implementers, hence the tendency to emphasise technology and not what technology will support — the academics.
The re-launch, which took place at Kyambogo College, corrected some of the mistakes, but then the real challenge at hand has never been grasped — what is in it for students beyond technology?
The other countries participating in this initiative have advanced. Some of the sponsoring partners have never looked back since that ill-fated launch, and information available indicates they are relocating their resources to ‘more serious’ Rwanda.
All is not lost however, and there still exist brilliant ways of archiving the core objectives.
Simon C. Waibale
cswaibale@yahoo.com