By Lenah Bosibori
Nairobi, Kenya: Education Technology(EdTech) app innovators have come together to discuss how to move Kenya’s education technology towards greater digitally-enabled teaching and learning.
Speaking on Wednesday during the two-day summit held at the Centre for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in Africa (CEMESTEA), Nairobi, Francis Karanja head of the National ICT Innovation and Integration Centre within the ministry of education, said the adoption of partnership strategies was key in advancing this agenda.
“We cannot achieve this alone. We need collaboration with other partners to ensure improvement of the education technology infrastructure,” said Karanja who also represented the PS in the ministry.
The EdTech summit 2022 is a convening for the powerful public and private sectors that can make the EdTech ecosystem based on technology-enabled teaching and learning.
The summit brings together industry experts to figure out how best to collaboratively design sustainable, more accessible, and impactful digital teaching and learning interventions in the country.
In her part, EdTech East Africa CEO and Co-founder, Jennifer Cotter-Otieno, cited the transformative power of technology in improving learning outcomes reiterating inclusivity.
“We want to create a movement towards evidence-based technology enabling teaching and learning, ” said Otieno.
Some of the creators of mobile education apps who shared their experiences included Albina Mumbi, supervisor of operations and account management at M-Shule who work by the use of SMS offline in informal settlements and ASAL regions.
“For ASAL regions, we transferred the classroom to the phones that are in the form of text messages,” adds Mumbi.
She further says that they wanted a solution that could improve the confidence of the child and be able to relate with them.
“We need to tailor solutions and policies to reach out to learners in informal settlements and ASAL regions to make sure they have quality education,” said Mumbi.
M-shule is an SMS knowledge-building platform that is helping organizations deliver Learning, Evaluation, Activation, and Data tools across East Africa;
Another organization represented was M-Lugha, an offline mother tongue-based learning mobile application, which has 20 indigenous languages, 3 of which have been approved by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development.
Education technology is an increasingly common discourse worldwide, with conversations focusing on how technology and data can be better leveraged to improve teaching and learning.
The EdTech summit 2022 is a timely conversation coming two years after the disruptions to physical learning worldwide at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
The Summit marks the beginning of a journey toward remedying the challenges that have been found to stifle the assertive application of educational technologies in the country.
The EdTech Summit is organized by EdTech East Africa in partnership with Mastercard Foundation, Acumen East Africa, Imaginable Futures, and EdTech Hub.
The participants represent the diverse stakeholders needed to realize the potential of digital teaching and learning in Kenya and co-design a collective way forward for the country. They include policymakers, entrepreneurs, innovative implementers of EdTech solutions, researchers, private sector donors and investors, development partners, digital infrastructure providers, media, academia, community leaders, and education and EdTech ecosystem, builders.
