Education council, Sidmach introduce online curriculum

The Nigeria Education Research and Development Council, in collaboration with Sidmach Technologies Nigeria Limited, has established an e-curriculum that makes available to students and teachers online educational materials.

Intel processor will power the initiative and it will run on Microsoft computer software.

The NERDC said the e-curriculum project was in line with the core mandate of the organisation, which is an agency of the Federal Ministry of Education.

The NERDC is the implementing agency for the Federal Ministry of Education with regard to the Universal Basic Education and other educational programmes nationwide.

Stakeholders in the educational sector have hailed the innovation as a welcome development especially in the face of the global digitalisation trend and the limitless use to which online medium can be put.

The Corporate Affairs Manager, INTEL Corporations Nigeria, Akinola Babatunde, expressed delight at the role INTEL played in making the e-curriculum see the light of day.

He explained that the e-curriculum involved the development of a scalable portal for the provision of digital online version of the present curriculum developed by the NERDC and approved by the Ministry of Education for Nigerian schools.

“INTEL is proud to be associated with such a novel initiative that has resulted in the creation of the e-curriculum that is being launched today. The decision to support the e-curriculum initiative was in line with the core objectives of INTEL, which is to help to expand the frontiers of solutions provisions.

“It is common knowledge that INTEL Explore and Learn is a digital- based portal that has been in the vanguard of advancing the frontiers of teaching and learning by taking it beyond the four walls of the classrooms and more available to students and the teachers,” Babatunde said.

He added that like the INTEL Explore and Learn portal, INTEL processor with support from Microsoft Windows platform would power the new e-curriculum.

The Director, Education, Microsoft Nigeria, Patrick Onwumere, said, “It is an accepted fact that the pace at which a nation’s economy develops is strongly tied to its ability to access and utilise knowledge, the achievement of which is largely attributable to the development and deployment of ICT.”

He said, “Incidentally, for us at Microsoft, providing that access strongly aligns with our 4Afrika initiative, reason we are very happy with the portal development which is a great addition to our many other collaborative efforts on education with the Nigerian government and its agencies.”

While commending the partnership between NERDC and Sidmach Technologies Limited, Onwumere added, “The portal is a huge leap towards easing access to teaching and learning and I dare say that this is in line with global trend.”

He noted that nations of the world were now adopting trends that would take teaching and learning to homes and in the palms of those that were willing, saying, “this is why Microsoft will continue to provide the technical support needed to make this happen as we have always done.”

The e-curriculum solution is a complete teaching and learning tool, which helps teachers teach and students learn better, using the NERDC- approved curriculum. The solution provides an interactive, analytic and collaborative learning environment for teachers and students.

Meanwhile, the Managing Director, Sidmach Technologies, Mr. Hassan Alao, said the e-curriculum’s features included browser-based which allow schools, teachers, students and the public anytime-anywhere access to curriculum-based information depending on the role of the user.

“We are creating a new culture of learning in Nigeria. I tell you, a teacher in front of 30 students can’t penetrate individual student as much as technology will do,” Alao said.

He stated that the e-curriculum portal solution would make the curriculum available in electronic format and would provide downloadable curricula for schools.

“It also provides contents to aid teachers in preparing scheme of work and lesson plan,” Alao added.

According to him, the software solution would ensure that structural contents were available to teachers, students and stakeholders.

The Executive Secretary, NERDC, Prof. Godswill Obioma, said the present effort at developing an e-curriculum portal was based on a public private partnership model.

He said the initiative was born out of the fact that when government provides the enabling policy, development in its generic manner could flourish tremendously.

Obioma said, “The objective of this Public Private Partnership arrangement is to, among other things, harness the potential of the private sector in tackling the challenges of access, education standards and quality, curriculum and teacher development, funding, as well as re-orientation for positive national values.

“It is this belief that yielded the present collaboration with Sidmach Technologies Nigeria Limited for the development of the e-curriculum for senior secondary education. It is hoped that similar efforts will be invested in the revised nine-year Basic Education Curriculum subsequently.”

Tweet