| House team on Rwanda laptop trip |
| Posted by: Susan Einhorn |
| The Parlimentary Committee on Education is on a three-day familiarization tour of Rwanda’s primary schools laptop project. Headed by its chairperson Sabina Chege, the committee seeks to with best practices, insights on the practicality of the project, and challenges, as the Kenyan government prepares to issue laptops to Standard One pupils beginning January, 2014. The tour is sponsored by Mount Kenya University’s Institute of Capacity Building. Rwanda applies the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) method of bringing digitization to schools, invented by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Nicholas Negroponte in 2005. It is a low-cost laptop ($200 a piece) that allows a multi-media approach to learning. Besides Rwanda, the OLPC is also used in Peru and Uruguay. The Kenya laptop project, which envisions a free laptop for every Standard One pupil next year, has been mired in controversy. The Sh52 billion earmarked for the project (Sh15 billion in the first phase) is seen in some political quarters as a case of misplaced priorities in expenditure, considering the lack of adequate infrastructure to support the project. Hiring more teachers and building classrooms especially in marginalized areas are seen as more urgent educational issues vis a vis purchasing laptops. “But seeing the Rwanda model, its affordability and how it has transformed learning and general development even in the remotest of areas, time is ripe for Kenya to roll out the project,” said Nkubito Bakuramutsa, National Coordinator, OLPC. “This is a great equalizer especially where the disparity between urban and rural teachers is great.” |
| Source: The Star (Kenya) | Published: October 11th, 2013 |
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