Orange Botswana supports Digital Education

With the world going digital, it is only right that learners are not left behind. In line with international trends, Botswana was announced as going digital in 2015, and the local television station (Btv) migrated from analogue to digital.

In this same spirit, it is time the educational system caught up with the rest of the world and joined the digital revolution that is taking the world by storm. To support and facilitate the digital education revolution, Orange Botswana through the Orange Foundation has launched a call for proposals for projects in digital education.

The Foundation invites submissions from all associations, NGOs and communities that wish to use digital tools to support or advance the teaching and learning system for marginalised groups such as people living with disability, girls and women, in school and out of school youth, the poor and rural communities. Submissions will run until February 22, 2016.

Orange PR and Foundation Manager Boga Chilinde-Masebu emphasised that, “digital education as a focus area for the Foundation comes after the re-alignment of the Orange Foundation strategy following a series of stakeholder feedback in 2014, where contribution to social development through education and skills development was highly recommended as one of the focal points for the Foundation.”

It is hoped that digital education as a dynamic system will potentially digitise the traditional education system and reduce the many problems faced by the traditional education system, thereby improving the learning environment for students and reducing the teacher’s workload.

“The entire world has gone digital, there is no reason why our education system should be left behind. With the various projects that we will sponsor this year, we are hoping to change the dynamics of the local education system positively which will hopefully result in improved performance of students,” she said.

Orange Foundation is therefore looking for legally registered and passionate NGOs, associations and communities that have the willingness to take the country’s education level to even greater heights through digital education. These entities must have acceptable internal financial structures.

It is through these sponsorships that Orange Botswana hopes to contribute significantly to the digitalisation of our educational system. This system will make teaching very effective. The teaching content will be easily manageable without carrying any paperwork.

There will be no need for a teacher to remember all the teaching content, the sequence of content and time to teach the content. The teacher just has to click and drag any multimedia content, real time 3D content and interactive applications related to syllabus which can be shown in the class which will help the students to remember many concepts more than through the traditional way of teaching.

“There are many problems faced by the traditional education system, for example, all the activities in the organisation are carried out manually, teachers have to maintain all the chapter content to be taught in the class on paper, attendance records are maintained in register books, keeping a track of teaching progress is also a cumbersome task,” said Orange PR and Foundation Manager Boga Chilinde-Masebu.

Contrary to popular belief, Digital learning is more than just providing students with a laptop. Digital learning requires a combination of technology, digital content and instruction.“Yes technology plays a vital role in facilitating digital learning, but the concept of digital learning is more than just provision of laptops and access to internet. In addition to the laptops and internet access, Digital learning is facilitated by technology that gives students some element of control over time, place, path and/or pace,” she said.

What this means is that, because of technology, learners get to experience learning on a whole new level. They have access to information at their fingertips, they also control when and how they learn. “We will all agree that there are people out there who prefer to work late at night, or early in the day but are unable to due to the current limitations of the current traditional educational system.

Yes students will go to school as normal, but tools such as educational apps, the Internet and a proliferation of Internet access devices will enhance their learning and they will be able to do more at their own time and in the comfort of their homes if they please,” she said.