Govt plans maintenance centre for laptop project

One-Laptop-Per-child (OLPC) programme plans to establish a modern call centre that would provide maintenance support to laptop-enabled schools across the country.Nkubito Bakuramutsa, the OLPC coordinator at Rwanda Education Board, told The New Times yesterday that plans are underway to have a modern facility that will support schools on the daily basis with regard to laptop’s maintenance.“The centre will address challenges affecting OLPC implementation in schools. It will basically provide technical support. We are currently looking for a strong operator to run the centre,” Bakuramutsa said.Without divulging much detail about the planned facility, he said the centre will be located in the ICT Park to be set up in the Kigali Special Economic Zone in Nyandungu Sector, Gasabo District.The government plans to set up an ICT park that will host a collection of technological investments, including training, industries, research and development.The park will also house the Carnegie Melon University Rwanda (CMU-R), which is temporarily located at Telecom House in Kacyiru.Bakuramutsa noted that they are yet to come up with the budget to fund the centre, saying “the centre is still in design; we are still identifying an operator that will run the centre.”The OLPC scheme that was launched in 2008 aims at creating Rwanda’s future computer programmers and as well as a tech-savvy generation boosting, Rwanda’s goal of becoming a knowledge-based society.Presently, the programme has seen more than 200,000 laptops deployed in more than 400 schools in all the 416 sectors of the country.According to the project coordinator, they have purchased an additional 50,000 laptops to be distributed to about 100 more schools countrywide.“Our target is to see one million laptops distributed in schools by 2017.”Computer programmingThe OLPC scheme has installed a “scratch programme” in all machines, an application meant for children to explore and experiment the concepts of computer programming with ease.Computer programming has always been seen as a complex task meant for students only in higher institutions of learning.Scratch is an educational programming language and a multimedia authoring tool that can be used by pupils, teachers, and parents for a range of educational and entertainment projects.It includes mathematics and science, simulations and visualisations of experiments, simple games, recording lectures with animated presentations, interactive art and music.OLPC project recently conducted a nationwide programming contest in scratch and this was aimed at showcasing the levels of programming skills among the OLPC beneficiaries in schools.The best two pupils from each province got a chance to take part in the exhibition at the recent Transform Africa Summit where they demonstrated their skills to participants, including the Heads of State.

National

Govt plans maintenance centre for laptop project