As part of the drive to promote Made-in-Rwanda products, 24 teachers from schools around the country, yesterday, received training on smart classrooms during a workshop organised by Africa Smart Investments Distribution and Positivo BGH.

The workshop, held in Kigali, involved taking teachers through sessions of creating data bases for classrooms and linking networks for learning.

Francois Karenzi, the executive chairman of Smart Africa Investments Distribution, said the workshop is part of an awareness campaign to promote use of smart classrooms around the country

"We want teachers to spearhead this drive of transforming Rwanda into a knowledge-based economy. It is also partly to explain the cost benefits of smart classrooms,” said Karenzi.

He added that such campaigns will hasten the implementation of the ICT masterplan after involving more universities, secondary and primary schools.

"Secondary schools need ICT as a teaching aid in their daily activities, but to achieve this, a gradual process has to be followed to engage both learners and teachers,” he added.

Already, schools are placing orders and recently some first year students from universities received laptops produced locally by Positivo BGH.

Currently, each laptop goes for Rwf215,000 when bundled with an antivirus bit defender, office 365 and 1 terabite cloud.

Teachers welcome the move amidst challenges

The target is to supply at least 256 grade A schools with the laptops, but these must have all the necessary infrastructure such as electricity, and Internet in place.

However, Simeon Nsabiyumva, a teacher of computer science and mathematics from Riviera High School, says that more training is necessary since teachers retain the duty to upload materials.

Tabu Nelson, the headmaster of Kigali Parents Secondary School, expressed great optimism in smart classrooms as necessary tools for reducing the teaching load.

"This simplifies the work of the teacher compared to the old teaching approaches. Imagine carrying books of chemistry, physics, and biology at the same time. With these devices, it would just be a matter of walking into the classroom ready to share knowledge, which will improve the learning environment,” he said.