Nyabondo Primary School in Kisumu County on Monday received laptops pledged by President Uhuru Kenyatta during the 2013 Presidential campaigns.
The school which received 22 learner digital devices, teacher devices, WiFi routers and a projector is among the three schools from the county that were selected by the Ministry of Education for piloting ahead of full implementation of the laptop project in 2017.
Speaking during the presentation of the laptops to Nyabondo Primary School, the Principal Secretary Broadcast and Telecommunication Sammy Itemere said the proof of concept will be done in 150 schools across the 47 counties.
He said the government target is to have the program piloted and rolled out in urban, peri-urban and rural schools and also cater for the special schools across the county to which the plot stage has addressed across the counties.
“The initial proof of concept stage only targets class one and two but the plan is that these devices be used up to class eight. In fact what we have told the school is that even the other kids from the upper classes can start interacting with the device. Even though their content may not be there as yet, they can start downloading contents from geographical sites to enrich their knowledge in preparations to when the program will be rolled out to the remaining classes,” said Itemere.
Mr Itemere said the initial stage of the program will take about a month and after they will deploy more devices across the 22,000 schools.
He said the government intends to complete the first half of the distribution by the end of the year.
The government in the past years has been putting in place measures to ensure that the project is a success.
Among the key measures taken are to ensure the schools have reliability of power either through the national grid or solar systems, safe storage for the devices and adequate learning contents.
“Schools across the counties should ensure that the teachers build capacity within themselves to ensure sustainability in case the trained teacher is not available to take up the classes. Teachers must ensure that they download the content which is readily available in the devices. They must also embrace technology to get comfortable to be able to train the pupils,” he said.
“In case the schools have any technical issues we have a call center where they can call 0206676800 for help. But on the ground we have technicians from Moi University who would provide technical support,” he added.