By Olawale Lamina
The Digital Resource Center, under the Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC has showcased its rich, top-notch digital learning services, towards boosting education of the Nigerian pupils, students and teachers for speedy national technological development and overall national growth.
That much was stressed as the center brought into focus its major activities, including other key services available at the media parley organized by the center located along Banex-Gwarinpa Expressway, Kado-Kuchi (opposite Next Cash an Carry Supermarket ), Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, on Thursday.
In his address, the National Coordinator of the Digital Resource Center, Professor Bashir Galadanci, acknowledged the presence of media organizations present at the event and expressed the confidence that the media parley would help ensure that activities of the center were successfully disseminated to the public.
Prof. Galadanci stated that the media parley was informed by the recognized need for more effective publicity based on the unanswered questions in the minds of many about what the DRC stood for.
He appealed to the media to help raise awareness in order to ensure that its media and publicity expectations are met. He also urged the purveyor of information to accord wider publicity to the digital revolution taking place through the smart school and digital programme offerings by the center, emphasizing that Nigerian learners will be competing with others around the world, which necessitated the need to acquire the right skills and knowledge to advance the nation.
The National Coordinator also stressed the fact that, part of the DRC’s mandates include the transformation of basic education in the country through the instrumentality of the Information and Communication Technology, ICT.
On this note, Prof. Galadanci particularly commended UBEC under the leadership of its executive secretary, Dr. Hamid Bobboyi and most especially, the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, for their commitments to the transformation of the nation’s education system towards meeting the global standards.
Also, in his presentation, the Center’s National Coordinator observed that
ICT education remains critically important in life because of its many applications.
He pointed out that, based on this fact, UBEC established the center to cater to the diverse needs for digital learning. He the commissioning by the minister for education about three (3) weeks ago, underscores what ICT can do, in terms of developing and distributing education materials in the form of digital contents, simulated experiments and other extant digital knowledge, compared to the traditional textbooks learning.
Galadanci informed that the center is out to coordinate all the digital programmes under the UBE, in recognition of the role of ICT in education.
The DRC boss declared that smart school programme under the UBEC is a bold and ambitious initiative to help Nigerian pupils and students get qualitative education, based on the availability of 37 smart schools in the country, with 13 already fully operational. He expressed the hope that some more will be operational by September, while few others may take a while because of delays associated with the building of structures.
On key requirements for the establishment a center, Prof. Galadanci mentioned that alternative power supply is key and other facilities such as science and ICT laboratories, among others.
He said the programmes offered by the center will enable the beneficiary to have robotic programming skills early in their formative years.
He stated that teachers’ critical role in process cannot be overemphasized, using instances of technologically development nations to emphasize the high premium they placed on teachers as some of the best sought after professionals.
Additionally, he said the use of traditional mode of learning, side by side with inclusion of digital technology, such as the video learning and others are in line with the requirements of the 20th century knowledge acquisition.
And, while noting that smart schools are capital intensive, he stressed that with 109 effective schools already in the country operating as small smart schools, with a laboratory each and well equiped, learners would continue to take advantage of smart education till further upgrade
Although, the DRC boss admitted the fact that most teachers are still traditional inclined in their approach to teaching, he said, “we need new teachers with smart class experience,” adding that through training of 800 teachers, they will be made to learn new techniques online via the teachers training thereby exposing them to digital literacy and other subjects like attitudinal change.
Speaking about the open schooling model, he revealed that, so far, Nigeria has the largest out of school children which the model helped to address.
He concluded by saying that in recognition of the critical role of ICT, UBEC is at the vanguard of radically transforming the basic education system in Nigeria.
Earlier, DRC’s Head of Capacity Building and Training, Dr. Hafsat Kontagora, expressed delight at the presence of journalists in attendance, which according to him underscored the significance of the work being done by the center.
Dr. Kontagora noted that the media as the story teller has the power to reach every part of the community, while expressing the hope that the parley will improve the DRC’s perception before the public and help build bridges among learners in Nigeria.
The Center’s head of training and capacity building said that activities which include digital literacy programme, teachers in blended learning, computer literacy, cyber security, robotics and a host of of others will cater to the needs of the Nigerian child.
Also, the DRC’s Public Relations Officer, PRO, Mr. David Apeh, in his welcome remark, noted the significance of the media in helping to drive the information dissemination need of the center.
The journalists present at the media parley were later conducted on facility tour of the Digital Resource Center, where they had the privilege of being exposed to the center’s multimedia studios, digital stations and library, virtual and robotic laboratory. Others include, interactive tech. station for teachers use of resource learning management, emerging technology station, smart education station (which promotes interactive learning), cyber school and exposure to multimedia studio for creating contents by teachers.
The Abuja Digital Resource Center boasts of other facilities such as 42-room hotel accomodation, 500-capacit conference/events all and another 100 capacity conference room, among other modern facilities
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