The Plateau State government has distributed digital skills equipment to 80 senior secondary schools across the 17 local government areas under subcomponent 2.2A: Digital literacy and remote learning platforms.
While presenting the equipment to principals of the benefiting schools in Jos, the state commissioner for education, Mrs Elizabeth Wapmuk, said each school would have a complete equipment of solar panels, inverters, tuber batteries and charge control.
Other equipment include 20 laptops and internet connectivity as well as projectors, motorised projectors/screen, ‘digital safe’ to protect the laptops. She said the equipment would reduce the digital infrastructure gap among students in the state.
The commissioner said the use of computers and digital technology is a requirement for future empowerment of the population, noting that without digital literacy, youths would be at a major disadvantage both economically and educationally.
“If we fail to provide them education for employment, the size of the unemployment problem will dwarf the current situation and bring tremendous hardship with it. Technological improvements in education have made life easier for students. Instead of using pen and paper, students nowadays use various software and tools to create presentations and projects,” she stated.
The commissioner said the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) is an intervention programme from the World Bank with the aim of developing the capacity of the girl-child and boys with requisite skills to advance to adulthood as they traverse the learning cycle.
“Girl-child education is a human right and our collective responsibility. The need for education is for adolescent girls to acquire life and digital skills. They should also be able to demonstrate the digital skills so that this can give them some independence and livelihood as against being dependent,” Wapmuk stressed.
She appealed to principals of the benefiting schools to monitor, guide and collectively supervise the use of the equipment so that students will no longer have phobia for JAMB and other external examinations as they are already migrating to digital solutions because the ICT equipment has been brought to their door steps.
The deputy project coordinator/ component lead, Digital Skills, Mr Dachung Thomas Danjang, said about 14,000 students are beneficiaries of the girl-child education programme of e-learning model equipment in Plateau State.
He said teachers and principals were also trained on how to handle the equipment in their schools to help boost learning and empowerment of girls in rural communities.
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