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Uganda: Teachers Lack Computer Skills
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New Vision (Kampala)
8 July 2008
Posted to the web 9 July 2008
Carol Natukunda
Kampala
Most schools - both government-owned and private, have taken on Computer Training as a formal subject for their students. However, a recent conference discovered that not many teachers are computer-literate. Carol Natukunda writes
DURING a computer lesson one afternoon, a 40-year-old teacher was embarrassed. She noticed a series of web browser windows on one of the computers displaying pornographic images, and no matter how quickly she closed each one, another would pop up in its place.
"There were a bunch of pop-ups," the woman narrates. "They would not go away. Some of them stayed there no matter how many times I clicked the red 'X', and others would just pop back up."
As the poor teacher struggled with what to do, one of her students came in handy and rescued her.
Needless to say, the teacher was the topic of the day, back in the dormitory.
So what do you do when you take a child to school, but realise that he or she knows much more than his teacher? Most of today's children are "hyper-tech," as opposed to their teachers, who grew up without the slightest idea on what a computer keyboard looks like. Theirs were the good old manual typewriters.
This was the dilemma that gripped teachers at a recent conference on information and communication technology at Standard High School, Zzana in Wakiso district. Most of the teachers confessed that they felt too "outdated" to teach their students computer skills.
"Young people love technology gadgets, because this is the era in which they were born. But for us, those things have found us when we are already grey haired. Yet parents are relying on us; what do we do?" asked Jonathan Kintu, a part-time teacher at a school in Wakiso.
However, Sempala Kigozi, the education and training committee chairperson of the Wakiso Secondary school Headteachers' Association, said teachers were often not interested in learning computer skills.
"The most difficult people to train are teachers. You tell them come for training and they say 'we have work to do'. There are teachers who have even never entered a computer lab, because they think there is nothing to learn," Kigozi observed.
Daniel Kakinda of School Net Uganda, an organisation in the Ministry of Education and Sports, explained that it was increasingly difficult to separate acquisition of computer skills from traditional learning.
"Textbooks and chalk-and-talk are the main basic methods of teaching, but they are passive and confined to reading and hearing. Computers are engaging and interesting," Kakinda says.
Citing geography lessons which require a lot of photography, Kakinda explained that with a computer, the teacher could take digital pictures or capture several geographical pictures on a video camera, which he or she would in turn bring to class, for the students to watch.
"This would bring the costs down. It is also for the teacher's own good," Kakinda says.
He, however, says teachers could programme the computers in their laboratories to ensure that they are not misused.
"Students can go off-track if you don't limit the programmes. You are likely to find someone searching on how to get rich! You also need to recommend to them the sites go to," Kakinda advised.
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Ismael Nkabirwa, an official with Kampala Computer Centre, demonstrated to the teachers the basics of Microsoft Word, including making a school management information system, computing marks, making reports and maintaining digital library systems, among others.
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| Copyright © 2008 New Vision. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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