[Music] Hi and welcome to the first of a series of conversations under the thought leadership initiative africa frontiers of innovation and this of course is courtesy of Canon EMEA my name is Victoria Rubidiri I am a broadcast journalist based here in Nairobi so good afternoon it's around 12 noon here in nairobi to those of you who are joining us in this time zone good morning to anyone else who's joining us from around the world and good evening it is a pleasure to have you join this very important discussion listen if you're joining us from the Canon EMEA Linkedin page or facebook please please please leave your comments and questions we want to make this session as interactive as possible as we move along it's about you you're joining the conversation I'd like to call you my extended panel as much as we have two very distinguished panelists that will be joining me for this afternoon discussion so we're talking about education today extremely important sector and critical sector uh when it comes to the continent we know it was disrupted the world over schools were shut down learners had to stay home because of social distancing protocols and as a result it frustrated their learning process at least for here in Kenya we had a nine month shutdown schools just recently opened this month and of course there were many challenges when it came to ensuring the learners were safe as they headed back to the classroom but let's take a look back and see how various countries across the continent responded and please keep in mind that there were a lot of challenges when you look at access to internet when you look at devices many learners simply did not have that to ensure that learning continued and to join me in this discussion and to help unpack this as we move along and just the importance of digitalization and what that means for the future of education on the continent I'll introduce our first panelist dr Joseph Wambua and he heads the Kenya Education Cloud it's a platform where education stakeholders can find educational solutions he has worked at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development for well over 10 years as a chief curriculum development officer specifically in the area of E-learning so he's the right guy to talk to during this discussion we also have Juliana Lindsey and she serves as a Unicef's country representative to Rwanda she has worked with Unicef since 1998 serving in various positions in Sudan South Africa Botswana Ghana and Kenya as well thank you both for joining me I guess we can begin with COVID-19 thank you so much thank you so much Joseph let's begin with how the COVID-19 really highlighted the need for new methods of education the kids were home and whether we liked it or not whether we were ready or not we had to have a certain modalities ready to ensure that learn being continued and joseph let me begin with you from the Kenyan perspective and really from the regional perspective in terms of response what were some successes that you can credit to how the kenyan government responded how other governments in the region responded when it came to ensuring yeah kids are home but learning continues thank you thank you Victoria and thank you for having me here in this show in this discussion I would like to say first of all that many governments were not prepared for this it was an emergency across the globe and and in Kenya we cannot say that we were all that prepared because being an emergency people don't prepare for emergencies but in Kenya we were lucky that in KCD we were already preparing radio lessons for learners this began long ago early 70s we were doing a radio broadcast through KBC KBC standing for Kenya Broadcasting Cooperation and we were also producing radio TV programs these TV programs are produced and aired from KICD through a channel we call edu channel and this channel becomes became very prominent during the COVID time because learning continued and as you say our learners could not stay home without learning because in education there is what we call learning loss or learning losses and this if we are not careful our learners would have gone through these learning losses and they would be like retrogressing in terms of education and so using the TV and the radio programs that I had from KCP we were able to plug in very well and continue learning from home for our learners thank you Victoria thanks Joseph and before I bring Juliana in just to follow up to that because yeah as much as we had the state broadcaster we had radio covering those bases especially in the very remote areas of of Kenya um were you sure that children were actually learning I know it was a completely different approach because you don't have that person-to-person interaction where they can be monitored and you are actually ensured they understand what's being taught this was a one-way kind of approach when it came to learning from from what you assessed did children actually go through effective learning during that period okay thank you Victoria uh we conducted a survey online because we all know the challenges that we are going through as a people and the only thing we were able to do is to conduct an online survey and see whether our learners were learning and uh interestingly uh most of our learners were learning but again I would like to be very sincere with you and say that we still have some areas where learners are not able to access these programs some are saying they don't even have a radio others were saying they don't have a TV others they don't have a smartphone so to be very frank we still have a small percentage which was not able to access these programs thank you Victoria thank you thank you and certainly pointing out an area that we will unpack later I mean when you're 202 00:07:29,919 --> 00:07:34,080 thinking about basic basic devices like a radio and television many learners did not have access to and so you know where does technology then come in to fill the gap Julianna let me bring you in on that just to get your thoughts from Rwanda how they responded I know Rwanda has been touted for its very quick response to the pandemic I know several classes were also built before schools were reopened but from your perspective also working with Unicef you also have a bird's eye view if you will on on what's been going on across the region how was response from where you sit thank you very much and it's a pleasure to be here as well in Rwanda like in Kenya the government was able to relatively quickly put lessons on radio about 98 of Rwandans have a radio so that was the immediate focus they were also able to put lessons on television and that included sign language interpretation because it's very important to reach children who don't learn in the same way who don't have the same abilities as other children the government also was able to put the curriculum online so it is accessible online to any child who has a device and data now of course that's the big caveat we realized but it's good that it's there it's an excellent starting point we did realize that not only do many children not have access to devices but also sometimes even if there are devices the teachers or the students or the parents may not have the full awareness of how to access a webpage for example so we learned through this that it's quite important to work on digital literacy for parents and on teachers and for teachers and of course for students as they grow up because they're the the future parents and this was similar in many countries around the region as well putting classes on radio on television where possible getting it on the internet it doesn't reach every child but in rwanda we did some surveys we collectively government unicef ngos others and it seems that about 80 percent of the children were able to access some form of learning online so I'll stop there fantastic fantastic thanks Juliana even in terms of challenges um what did you notice probably offered barriers or were barriers uh in ensuring that learners were getting the learning that they needed during that yeah it's a good question I mean certainly the ability to use the technology or the services that are provided especially disabled children so I mentioned the sign language we also with other ngos were able to put some of the lessons into braille so that blind children they could distribute the the papers the printed braille papers to the children so they at least could try to continue learning we also worked with an ngo so that their volunteers could actually phone parents of disabled children on a regular basis to make sure that they could have some encouragement and a few extra tips on providing the support to those children that's needed and of course the obvious is access to devices for any child there were a number of organizations that distributed radios to families that didn't have radios at home because that's really the the first starting point in terms of helping children get access to education when they're not in school fantastic and great to see that a group that's often ignored and special needs kids um was actually catered to during that period let's move on to a larger perspective on just how education has changed or shifted uh on the continent and whether it's changing fast enough you know oftentimes they'll say the education system in Africa uses outdated methods uh is not preparing children for the future but it's interesting because during this Covid 19 period it offers or has offered opportunities in which educators governments can tap into technology 327 00:11:43,680 --> 00:11:48,720 uh to ensure that they're up to par when it comes to the standards of education I mean we've seen the continent do this before in terms of leapfrogging uh into mobile phones completely bypassing fixed line technology right and seeing that kind of shift and change can the same happen uh in education and really would you say has Covid 19 helped in accelerating that I'll begin with you Julianna sure thank you so the changes on the continent over the past couple of decades are dramatic and particularly in terms of attendance at school our goal with governments used to be to try to get primary school children just to go to school and now in many countries Rwanda included and I suspect Kenya as well the enrollment and the attendance rates in primary school are well above 80 or 90 percent in most cases so that big milestone in many cases has been crossed the major challenge now is quality is making sure that children when they finish grade 4 or grade 5 or grade 6 that they can actually read and write and do basic arithmetic we've seen progress in terms of the curricula Joseph will know better than I that many countries have now put in place what we call competency-based curricula which is more focused on actually understanding the material and having the reading or writing competency and not just throwing information at children and there's no doubt that the digital methods can help with this they're not a substitute for a child being in the classroom with the teacher but they're absolutely an effective aid that can be useful certainly certainly and I know Joseph wanted to add on to the previous question go ahead Joseph thank you Victoria I wanted to add on what I submitted in that area that you had asked me earlier and what I want to point out is that as Ronda was doing sign language in Kenya we were also doing sign language application when you view every channel videos which you are air during copied time you will see a sign in the operator at the corner trying to interpret for learners who maybe are not able to hear what is being aired through through our television programs and also I would like to point out that we also had online programs which were aired through Kenya education cloud and through Kenya education cloud we were able to partner even with other organizations just to ensure our learners are able to get bundles which they could use to stream their online content thank you can I get to the other part of the question certainly because we're already on uh the competence-based curriculum here in Kenya you can just talk more on that in terms of that transition to a different education system thank you Victoria so in Kenya we are doing the competency-based curriculum and I would like to say that it just picked on very well actually now we are at grade four and in july we are transmitting our learners to grade five and the competency based curriculum is super curricular when compared to the objectives based curriculum because an incompetency-based curriculum we are looking at what is this able to do as opposed to getting answers out of what learners are being taught and this is very interesting for us as Kenyans because we are pushing the club a notch higher and our learners are able to perform tasks they are not just remote learners or rather road learners but they are able to get ideas get knowledge and put it into action and actualize a skill which they are given to perform so that is one way I can say the curriculum is helping our country and secondly I would say that COVID-19 try to accelerate the process of digitization of education in that our teachers now most some of them are able to conduct online meetings some are able to set up online meetings and we are now comfortable with this earlier on there was Online Meetings our teachers were hearing technology live alone conducting an online meeting even our laptop and operating laptop was an issue but nowadays our teachers are very competent to the point of conducting and setting up an online meeting thank you Victoria interesting point you bring out there that teachers feared technology right they're the ones who are supposed to kind of assure learners into this new space but they too needed some orientation if you will Juliana let me come to you in terms of that in ensuring that teachers are ready teachers are prepared great we have the devices wonderful we have the curriculum but for the people who are tasked with reaching students on this new and unique platform for many of them you know how did preparations kind of happen and how are they being engaged good question so there are two things Rwanda has put out a program called smart classrooms which has involved setting up digital technology in many of the classrooms around the country and of course you don't just throw in the hardware without showing people the software as well so part of that process has been training teachers on how to use the smart classroom in addition the government realized the ministry of education realized during the COVID lockdown and this issue with schools that teachers themselves needed some additional training on digital literacy as Joseph was alluding to and so there was a expanded and improved and increased process over the last few months of training teachers on how to use laptop laptops how to access web pages how to engage with students etc so that they could maximize the use of technology fantastic Joseph let me bring you in you know when it comes to I know this is quite a headache for a lot of educators assessment now granted here in Kenya schools have opened but for many other countries across the continent that have not testing is part of the education and learning process and to ensure that it's a fair process that students are being assessed well how do you ensure that when you're dealing with distance learning I mean you can just imagine someone is in their room with a laptop how can you ensure that they're not going onto google to look up some answers if you will during an assessment process how do you ensure that it's a very fair you know process thank you thank you Victoria and it's a good question actually what is not assessed is not well learned if we don't assess what we teach our learners then we'll be leaving them at a hanging point they will be hanging because if we don't assess we don't value the the process of learning and so I would say that uh in CBC we are investing on formative assessments as opposed to summative assessment what we used earlier was summative assessment in the sense that after the four years of education our learners could get just one test to see what they have been able to acquire across the four years period or across the eight years period for the case of the primary level education but now we are emphasizing very much informative assessment and the formative assessment can come in different ways we are saying this is assessment which goes on in during the learning process as the teacher teaches the learners they continuously continue assessing the learners and see how far how much what what gaps are there during the learning process so we can start right there from the classroom our teachers can competently uh conduct formative assessment but now we are on the online learning so I am going to jump into the online learning and say that first we have to inculcate the value of integrity in our learners and CPC is very strong on values we are coming strongly because we realize that our learners don't have values that are required and one which can be used to ensure that our learners are assessed genuinely is the value of integrity we just instill to them the importance of being honest and when they are taking an examination for example be careful just to give what they know and in CBC we are also saying that it is not about competition our learners are not competing and so we are not trying to to see who is better than the other but we are trying to come up with a set of skills uh and packaging them and saying that this lana is able to do one two three this one is about to do one two three and that one does not mean that if you are not able to do what this other one is not he's able to do you are a failure in CPC we don't have failures all learners are supposed to come out as successful and therefore that's why we are saying that we are devising learners to take a path which they can be able to pursue in life comfortably without them facing a lot of challenges so um Victoria my point is integrity honesty and and we can also structure assessment in such a way that we can do a project which they can carry out over a given period of time like for instance they can be given a project to develop a kitchen garden in their homes or where they stay and remember even in towns we can have a kitchen garden where we can have the hanging hanging sacks which are filled with soil and they plant their sukuma wiki they plant their spinach there they are there their onions and they're about to others from there so once they establish this kitchen garden they can take some pictures and then sends to their teacher who will now add to their portfolio and be able to say this was able to establish a kitchen garden and these are the products thank you thank you Victoria that is what I can say for now and just to follow up on that Joseph should integrity and honesty not prevail um are there other mechanisms other modalities that can be used for instance artificial intelligence to help with feedback and monitoring I know South Africa was pretty successful uh in putting together an Artificial Intelligence education platform called miss zora that actually helps with that but from the canyon perspective is that treatment possible? yes I would say yes Victoria uh one thing I believe is that all things are possible it's only that for us to be able to achieve some things we may take a little longer and we may put in a little more effort but all things are possible what we are doing in Kenya Education Cloud we are setting up an intelligent curriculum dashboard which will be able to track all these formal learners and then whenever they take a course or they take some tests online they will be will be putting a portfolio for them even without their knowledge and without telling them that this is what you are using to tell whether you are competent in doing one two three or not so that correction intelligent curriculum dashboard is uh something we have uh in play we are planning to have in KEC okay you see you're standing for Kenya Education Cloud so that is possible Victoria Juliana let me bring you in um after going through this crisis period and you know what it's still with us we can't say we're out of the woods just yet um it's caused us to reimagine we look at what a classroom can be and of course coming with it is a lot of challenges when it comes to budget and various implementation exercises but from where you sit and what unicef is doing I know it has an amazing program called reimagine education tell us more on what that seeks to do to kind of gear us in the direction of a classroom of the future thank you Victoria indeed this is an initiative that began even before covet because we realized that globally we need to reimagine education in order for kids to have the skills they need and also in order to reach all children not just in primary school but particularly those in secondary school because so many teenagers including in Rwanda don't have the chance to go to high school there are five main components of the reimagine education initiative the first one is making sure that we have good solid digital content because there's no point having a device if you don't have good teaching and learning information that works on that device so the first one is the teaching and learning content the second is connectivity there's a major initiative called giga which is run by unicef and the ITU the International Telecommunications Union together to connect every school in the world to the internet over the next few years as you can see it's rather ambitious but we've realized that this is critical in order for kids to have an equal opportunity then to access markets to access different economic opportunities later on the third component is making sure that devices are affordable because the child at home also needs to be able to have some way to connect to the internet which comes to the fourth component which is connectivity at home in general for the population so we're working with internet providers to see if there are ways to reduce those costs and finally the fifth component is engagement of young people themselves they need to have the chance to be involved in deciding what the content should be to give their input on what's an affordable amount of money to pay for internet connectivity to give their input on what kinds of devices work best what's most user-friendly etc so this is a major initiative that works with governments works with the private sector and it's being rolled out globally by unicef that is quite a grand plan I was just I think I just stopped at the fact that you said that giga part of the program wants to connect every young person to the internet by 2030. that is quite ambitious and and you know that can't be done without for lack of a better term aggressive collaboration which brings me to my next question for you Joseph how important is collaboration with private sector players with ngo players when it comes to ensuring you are delivering quality uh to to the learners I know in Kenya we had to do a lot of that with the government collaborating with telcos to ensure they were able to deliver education while kids were at home thank you thank you so much Victoria that is a very good question because in africa we believe in ubuntu we also believe in uh working together because we say we have a saying that says that if you want to work fast walk alone if you want to go far go with others so we cannot achieve much as a Kenyan government alone but we have to partner with our private sector and also with other partners from our donors and foundations and staff we partnered with safaricom as KICD just to ensure that our last free bundles for them to be able to access from Kenya Education Cloud so I was saying that in Kenya we have partnered with safaricom which is a telecom company and uh safaricom was giving our learners bundles you just uh key in a usb ussd card star 544 ash and you are able to select education bundle then education of bando from KICD and then our learners were able to enjoy learning even during covid using the free bundles yeah that is one then two we are also getting assistance from world bank we we have a program we are calling the GPA global partnership in education and this uh partnership is whereby we are getting a lot of resources just to make sure that we produce quality programs for our learners and to start with we are adapting content interactive digital content for our number one and grade two currently we have already scripted content we are now digitizing it just to make sure that our learners with special needs can be able to access that from whatever they are and to start with we began with learners with visual impairment and learners with hearing impairment those are the two categories we have already adapted and and we are now in the process of producing the content and after grade one content we are going to grade two and then also make sure that the content is well adapted for learners to special needs because if you can uh recall in our constitution Kenyan constitution 2010 we uh article 54 is very clear on learner species and it stipulates that every learner with special needs should be given materials which are matching the ones which are given to learners who are regular Learners who don't have any issue all right fantastic I hope I am audible uh we got lost in translation at a point thank you for filling in joseph I think you need to come over to my part of uh the profession that was really good apologies once again to those of you who were uh following the discussion let's head back to where we left off and that was the importance of collaboration and corporation Joseph you know this all too well when it comes to government private sector coming together to ensure that there's no interruptions or disruptions much like what we experienced a few minutes ago but but how did that work at least in the Kenyan context where government collaborated with telcos to ensure that learning continued Victoria come up again I lost you for a moment let me repeat that sorry about that joseph so just the importance of collaboration and just for you to speak more on the corporation between government and telcos when it came to ensuring learning continued okay okay in Kenya I had pointed out that we got into a partnership with safaricom which is a Kenyan teleco communication company and we they were giving free bundles to our learners for them to be able to access online content from Kenya Education Cloud and they were just required to uh to dial star 544 ash then you call samarico then you are able to get um a step-by-step guide uh trying to ensure that you get your free bundle which was 100 mb's megabytes and uh with android and this our learners were able to consume content as without any problems from Kenya Education Cloud thank you Victoria and let's talk really quickly about the importance of budget we know that education takes a big chunk of the national budget at least here for Kenya but oftentimes you'll find efficiency and use of that budget can be a problem a lot of the education budget was eroded last year due to covid as was many other budgets but when you look at moving forward and what the budgeting process needs to look like to ensure we're implementing a lot of what we've been talking about throughout this discussion uh bringing on new technologies devices making data more affordable what does the government need to do and even beyond the corporations you were just talking about with telcos to ensure that it's using budgets efficiently and that's for you Joseph thank you Victoria I I think uh we need to re-strategize as governments because uh we have learned a lot from COVID I mean personally I don't want to look at COVID as a menace I just want to locate a look at it as a learning process or a learning opportunity because I learned a lot uh during covid time and uh one thing I learned is that proper planning is key in every sector not only in education but in every other sector look at our health sector look at our power any other sector depends entirely on proper planning and in Kenya we had we had to put some uh measures in place just to ensure that we have some stop gap measures which are able to ensure that learning continues as we had earlier said and one of the things that our government did was violent we are wiring of our monies from one vote to another vote head and the most of the monies were directed to production of these programs just to ensure that they are running and our learners are able to access learning to avoid what we call the learning laws and uh again are you asking going forward how should planning be and I would like to say that going forward we should ensure that we have enough monies for emergencies which can cater for large emergencies like COVID-19 and besides that we need to plan with blended learning in mind because I don't see ourselves going back to the normal way we were doing things before in 2019 and blended learning will be like a way forward to most of the governments across the globe because we cannot manage to have our learners social distance adequately we cannot have our learners stay at home again but would rather plan having blended learning in mind going forward thank you thanks for that submission and indeed like you said it's inevitable technology just will be a part of how we teach the next generation I can see some questions are coming in uh from social media and I'll take one at this point from dennis uh den is saying do you think distance education provides equal 992 00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:46,879 opportunity and he says I think the opposite he doesn't say why uh but let me put it to the panel juliana let me come to you first and then joseph will get your response sure so it's a really good question and one that we grapple with because our aim overall together with governments is to make sure that every child has an equal opportunity for education I think the answer depends on what the situation of the child is so if we're talking about a deaf child for example who might not have the chance to go to a school where sign language can be used that the child has access to a television where sign language is used that's a bonus for the child on the other hand if we're talking about a child in a poor family in a far village who can't afford internet and if they're things that are required for the education that are offered on any internet and only the wealthy kids or only the kids who are lucky to have a device can access it then that's obviously a disadvantage so there's no across the board right or wrong good or bad the challenge is to make sure that we can get the best out of technology for every child in their particular situation I hope that helps absolutely and joseph from you I was reading an article that was talking about even with the interventions for online learning for instance in south africa they have 12 million learners only 500 000 were reached by that digital intervention right so you're just thinking about a huge chunk of learners that were left out because of the challenges Juliana just mentioned um so you know what more can be done to close that digital divide if you will thank you thank you Victoria I would like to start by saying that uh COVID-19 brought changes in our education sector and across the globe changes are always opposed if you go back to your history whenever a change comes by people start by tending to a posit but what I would like to say is that when you become persistent and you say this is the way we are going as a government we are going blended learning people will now start gathering resources together and trying to ensure that they have all what it takes for them to be able to go through learning using the the given opportunities one of it being using technology I don't think uh we have learners who say we are not going to school because we are paying school fees school fees in some schools can go to the extent of thirty thousand forty thousand in Kenya and that is translating to four hundred dollar u.s dollars yeah and they managed to to raise this money and uh if you can look at our situation of education right now most of the day schools education is free they are not paying monies for their education they are only paying something small to cater for maybe their lunches and maybe their teas at 11 and therefore if if if we now use the monies which they were paying before and say that they are going to procure the necessary technologies which are required I think we'll be there and we will be able to conduct blooded learning the way it should be when you come to radio programs how much money do I need to buy a basic phone my basic form is a is a like what we call in Kenya the kabambe mulika moisi just the symbol the simplest phone and imagine that from the gloria as a camera as a camera and it also has a radio they can catch KICB radio programs using that kabambe and if I was to translate cost about a hundred dollars not added by ten ten one dollar ten dollars actually because it is about one thousand you can get a kabambe and you can be able to catch the kicd radio programs so I don't think this is supposed to be an entrance to blended learning and especially when we are talking about catching the radio programs which are broadcasted through Kenya broadcasting corporation so so I think Victoria that is one thing I want to make very clear and I don't I also want to talk slightly towards something concerning the rights of our learners and they say that in Kenya as well all our learners have a right to education and having a right to education therefore the parents should also play their role and ensure that they equip these learners with what they require for them to be able to learn so going back to the question uh is the distance learning providing equal opportunities I would say yes for those people who are proactive they can be able to get these programs just like any other Kenyan across any part of the country and therefore it all depends on our initiatives as parents and as education stakeholders and my advice would be when you see changes coming please uh dive with them jump with them swim the tights don't oppose just swim the tide and though you all will be well thank you Victoria thanks for that Joseph and and a great point there in terms of using what you have and scaling what works you know Julianna I was reading a unesco report that talked about the importance of designing with deliberate consideration of the environment in which that innovation will reside Africa is very unique very diverse and as much as we're talking about moving into a technological pathway when it comes to education how important is it to cater to um you know also tailor a lot of the innovation and solutions to the communities that will be served by it when it comes to education it's absolutely critical of course I mean one of the starting points is language we advocate that the first years of school be in the native tongue and in countries where that takes place you know if you just pull something off the shelf that was created in another language it's not going to work in that particular environment so the first step of course is making sure that digital content is accessible in a language that children and that teachers can understand it's also important to make sure that it has culturally appropriate references there's no point referring to apples in a country where apples are not part of the normal fruit that uh that a child sees um so there are all sorts of of different things that need to be done to make sure that the content is appropriate and that's why one can certainly take concepts and ideas from off-the-shelf content but it can also be created indigenously and it creates jobs locally to create that content locally and it helps make sure then that the content will resonate with children and with families which is just one more thing on this point which is why that fifth point on youth engagement in the reimagined education initiative is so important that it not just be as adults creating things for children and young people but that they have the chance to give their ideas about what works for them that we test things out before they're implemented so that they can adapt and edit and guide the concepts and the content thank you absolutely Joseph let me bring you in there when it comes to what the future of education looks like now you talked about blended learning being something we can't come away from on the continent governments having to prioritize budgeting towards that but you know when it comes to practically implementing strategies like that and ensuring that yes communities are receptive you mentioned at times people can fight change they don't see where this would help it changing mindsets and ideas and thoughts towards something new and different I believe you know Africa is ripe for new ideas and technologies we've seen as I mentioned much much earlier we've managed to leapfrog different technologies into something much more advanced and so even in terms of adaptability we can do it but from a practical sense you're an educator how do we ensure that it's received and it's utilized in a beneficial manner to to all that will be using the technology thank you thank you Victoria for that question it's a very good one and I would like to point out that one thing that governments need to do is a creation of awareness it's very important and as you create awareness you also showed the public the need to embrace the technologies that we are proposing and in this case we are proposing blended learning because I'm looking at it and I am convinced totally that it is the way to go in education and therefore the only way we can do as a people is to embrace it and this can start with the government trying to come up with some creation of awareness programs which can start from the the teachers themselves then we move to the learners we move to parents we move to education officers and then the entire country we can even buy air time through the the mainstream media and make sure that we we drum beat but for the for the for the blood learning because it is the way to go and it is solving a lot of solutions for us because like now if uh if if I was asked it would be very difficult for me to be in this interview 1289 00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:36,640 but through technology I'm able to meet with uh with the Juliana I'm able to meet with you Victoria I'm about to meet with regina wherever she is and we are brought together by technology and I see a lot of potential in 1296 00:44:46,319 --> 00:44:50,640 technology and I I think we have to first create awareness we set apart a budget that is meant to make people aware of of these technologies and also show them the benefit of using technology in the learning process the benefits are enormous I think that is a talk for another day if we engage now and start talking about benefits of using technology and education I can talk the whole day about it so allow me not to go there so the other thing is that um under the future of education I think in kec we have something we are trying to come up with which we are calling the creator studio and in creator studio we want to equip our publishers with the tools that are required to develop interactive digital content we want to give them programs programming languages licenses which are free when they get there they download for free they want to give them as suits which are meant for developing content when they get there they just access the tools for free they develop content and they submit because already in Kenya education cloud we have a portal where publishers can be able to submit content for free then after they submit they pay something for us to be able to evaluate so I want to say that if we give them that platform we will be kind of motivating them to produce a lot of content for our learners to get quality education so that is another future of education I'm seeing and it is being funded through kenya education cloud and as I alluded to earlier there is also the issue of development of an intelligent curriculum dashboards in CBC we are saying that all learners have a potential and we have a duty to nurture their potentials and therefore for me to be able to nurture your potential I have to realize it first and if I'm using the intelligent curriculum dashboard I'll be able to identify where my learners are strong and where they are weak if there are interventions which I can bring on board to fix those weaknesses then why not bring them on board and I fix the weaknesses then but the ultimate goal will be to identify where my learners are strong in and therefore advise them accordingly on which career they can take in life and I think that is another thing that we are coming up with which is going to be a future of KEC and in general a future of Kenya because we are talking about CBC and we are talking about nurturing every learner's potential uh consuming the development of content we are saying that we are not going to develop content for only regular learners and when I'm talking about regular learners here I am talking about learners who don't have any impairment but we are saying that we are going to produce content which can be consumed by all learners a term that I can I want to bring in now one one size fits one not one one size fits all but one one size fits one that term means that when I produce my digital content it should be consumed by all learners regardless of their their standards whether hearing impaired whether visually impaired whether physically impaired whether autistic whether normal they should be able to consume my content and we have done this before we did this in 2019 we tested in kcd it worked for us and and it is uh we were the first one globally to do this Victoria so KCD has really ventured in this area of development of content and we used our platform we were calling the udl universal design for learning that is which is able to ensure that all our learners are able to consume our content then something else I want to add on before you I give the learner an opportunity is that when you opening content right now we are making use of animations we are making use of videos we are making use of illustrations photographs and audio sounds in our content to make it interactive because we believe our learners are different some are auditory learners others are visual learners and others are kinesthetic so we want to cater for all the categories using the multimedia element have just listed but we want to take uh to take it a notch higher we want to bring the issue of mixed reality when I'm developing content for physics for example I met my learner interact with its real time using mixed reality I also want to bring in the aspect of virtual reality where my learners can go for a virtual tour to seashells for example they do a seashells and they come back to class virtually I also we also we also thinking of enhancing our content and making it have aspects of augmented reality and I believe this is possible because I told you that one thing I believe is that all things are possible anything can be done and and let me stop there so that I don't I don't go too too far thank you Victoria thank you thank you Joseph and great great points coming out there let me head over to some of the feedback coming in uh manooge saying traditional face-to-face learning is real-time or synchronous learning while E-learning can be both synchronous and asynchronous and uh that more of a comment than a question uh george saying since there is a very poor correlation between academic success and success in life well this shows that an innovative approach towards handling life's challenges is the key to life and growth thank you for that george another one here good afternoon you don't give your name but indeed any assessment should enable the learner to be creative in the approach towards finding solutions to problems yeah that's right we're teaching uh you know very critical thinking not robots we want to also ensure that they can think for themselves and challenge ideas as well um I wanted to come back to you Juliana just in terms of implementation of unicef's reimagine education program it's quite ambitious you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that's going to go into this and and I know uh it has earmarked several countries to start rolling out at least the pilot phase of this how does it seek to do this and also in terms of collaboration with various actors in the respective countries that it will be uh doing the roll out how does it intend to to carry all this out sure I'll give you a couple of examples in Rwanda we're focusing at the moment on getting giga started getting the schools connected to internet together with the ministry of ict and other players in the country I know that kenya is participating in giga as well and safari come there is working on getting schools connected in other countries like in kazakhstan my colleagues from giga have been able to help the government reduce the monthly cost that they're paying for internet connectivity which is of course one of the the main challenges figuring out even if you've got every school connected how do you actually pay for that on a monthly basis so we're also talking with some colleagues in the private sector to see if there are any innovative financing mechanisms that can be used where investors would invest and the return on that investment could be used to pay for connectivity on a recurring basis but that's in the works we'll have to see how it works one other example of collaboration that you are asking about is a global partnership that unicef has with microsoft uh it's a platform called the learning passport which is a platform microsoft has created onto which countries that don't have their own platforms can load their digital content or their content digitally so that children can access that if it's not already been done so those are just a couple of examples of the of the collaboration and the partnerships fantastic and we're excited to see you know what it yields once it's uh in the pipeline but just as we begin to wrap up this discussion and to kind of pull out various critical points that were drawn out during this discussion uh Joseph you know what are some take-homes for lack of a better term for anyone who's been watching for the past hour can say this is what I want you to walk away with what would you give them in a bite size I'll give you about a minute thank you so much Victoria for the opportunity one thing I want to encourage everyone who is watching is that let us embrace change let us embrace change and in this case in techno in education let us embrace blended learning let us start preparing as parents as slavs as teachers as the general population and prepare for blended learning because it is coming thank you thanks Julia over to you well great minds think alike unicef actually did a study across West Central Eastern and Southern Africa about a year ago regarding lots of different digital applications in the education sphere and the general conclusion of that study was that there are great opportunities with digital we have to embrace it but it's not the be all and end all it's not a silver bullet it has to be combined with in-person instruction so that children get the support from the teacher they can ask questions and they can have the social interaction with their peers which is why it's so important that children despite the COVID Epidemic be able to actually go to school certainly couldn't have said it better myself um I don't know if we have any more comments coming through but I'm seeing for those of you who are joining us on linkedin someone from France bonjour England Turkey from all over the world thank you so much for joining into the discussion if they have any more questions or comments uh please have them come through via facebook and of course on the linkedin page as well I want to say thank you so so much to my distinguished panel uh Juliana Lindsey and Joseph Wambua for your great insights having us think very differently when it comes to the way forward what's next for education on the continent and and the role that uh digitalization plays in accelerating that uh it was a tough lesson to learn thanks to COVID but a lesson to learn nonetheless thank you so much and of course keep your eyeballs right here on the linkedin page the Canon EMEA for more uh discussions we'll be having under the Africa frontiers of innovation uh thought leadership platform we want to hear from you and make this a community as we go along with these very crucial and important discussions and conversations that arise during this time COVID was the emergency crisis we didn't see coming but we have learnt the hard way to adjust to adapt I heard someone once say that this period is about survival of the quickest not necessarily the fittest all right food for thought thank you so much for joining the discussion and once again we will be back next month with another engaging discussion different topic and of course another wonderful panel of individuals and experts to help break it down and get us to think differently about the world around us thank you for joining us I'm Victoria Rubadiri enjoy the rest of your morning afternoon or evening depending on where you're joining us from Kohari
2021-03-06