Government seeks to have more digital content in curriculum

The Ministry of Education is working on a plan to include more digital content in the new school curriculum due for rollout in January next year. This was revealed last week in a meeting of ministry officials and a team from Germany. The content that will include animations and videos is to be developed by German firm MedienLB for different subjects such as Biology, Chemistry and Physics, among others, to enable learners relate class work to the real world. Dr Anita Stangl, the chief executive of MedienLB, said audiovisual materials for all levels have been known to enhance interactive studying in developed countries and can as well match with the Rwandan infrastructure. Sean Koo, Chief Operations Officer Olleh Rwanda Networks explains how internet acces will help facilitate the Digital Curriculum . “Both teachers and students will have full access to the packages and will learn faster. When you see something with your eyes, recognition and memorising is easy,” Stangl said. She added that since the competence-based curricular is to be implemented next year, adding digital content will lessen the workload of explaining certain subjects. “The curriculum is already written but originally hard to understand areas such as automoto mechanics or photosynthesis need to be clearly illustrated,” Stangl said. The first set of the digital content is to be rolled out in a pilot project in two months, with content from both general education and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). Dr Anita Stangl (L) CEO MedienLB throws more light on how the digital curriculum operates. (Doreen Umutesi) Albert Nsengiyumva, the state minister in charge of TVET, said, currently, the curriculum meets the standard but requires integrating additional technologies. “Through working with the different partners, it is possible to provide teachers in TVET more advanced skills that are useful for their disciplines,” Nsengiyumva said. The minister added that the existing infrastructure is enough to accommodate the technology and only connecting the different ecosystems is necessary. Alex Ntale (R) Executive Director ICT Chamber explains the importance of digitalising the curriculum and its impact on ICT. (All photos by Doreen Umutesi) “After piloting this, we will identify the proper concept of working with the different institutions to boost our developments,” he said. Sean Koo, the Olleh Rwanda network chief operations officer, said connecting more schools will come before the implementation of the project since slow internet speed impede faster downloads. “We will install fibre networks within the schools before the transition to eliminate the problem of slow connections and look into boosting the network used in long distance learning,” Koo said. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Government seeks to have more digital content in curriculum