As Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) begin to take root in Uganda, preliminary findings from a five year project say there has been increased access to qualitative educational materials from the Internet.

Launched in 2007, the Pan African Research Agenda on the Pedagogical Integration of ICTs (PanAf), a joint initiative of the Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa (ERNWACA) and the University of Montreal (Canada), is a project in 11 countries including Uganda seeking to better understand how the academic integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) can enhance the quality of teaching and learning in Africa.

The project seeks to achieve its goals by collecting new school-scale data, creating opportunities for knowledge sharing, and providing learning opportunities for those involved.

According to the Uganda report from the project, the access of ICTs has resulted into improved content delivery on the part of the educators and access to update educational information on the part of the learners. "This makes learners' more enthusiastic to put in more effort and perform better just like their colleagues in other schools and countries," say the findings.

The findings further reveal that the presence of Cyber classrooms in some schools especially secondary institutions has greatly impacted on the learning of students especially those who are offering science subjects.

"Key science subjects such as Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics are simplified for students when taught using cyber rooms," the report adds. "cyber schooling has increased student motivation, willingness and generally changed the traditional belief of saying science subjects are difficult and therefore mostly done by boys. This is so effective in Nabisunsa Girls School."

Students also told the researchers that ICT usage makes learning more interesting and exciting as well as improving their level of participation compared to other subjects where there is no ICT integration at all.

Teachers disclosed that the integration of ICT and computers in particular facilitates individual learning as students can get notes; compare notes and other educational resources from the Internet.

"As an educator, you cannot say it all, but we facilitate learning, students know how to search for information and other related knowledge on the topics we have covered or not covered," said a teacher at King's College Budo. "It is a common practice in this institution for the educator to introduce a topic and ask the learners to go and surf the Internet and get more information to be used in the next lesson."

However, all is not rosy. Teachers cited negative impacts including students getting addicted to such an extent that they don't easily learn from other methods.

"Some of them have reached the extent of not taking notes or even attending classes, spending valuable time on the Internet chatting with friends, reading pornographic literature and others may become victims of crime," the study authors wrote. "In some cases learners over rely on Internet; become stubborn in class even when they don't have the capacity to separate between relevant information from trash."

Similarly, some teachers complained that students had become lazy because they hoped to get all the information they wanted from the Internet. On some occasions, it was noted, this has discouraged hard work and the spirit of innovativeness, making students less functional in the absence of the Internet.

The author is an SPH-CDC fellow attached to Uganda Health Communication Alliance and Health Communication Partnership.