Week 7 - Distance learning in Zambia

The main concern of any school is the wellbeing of the children who attend. I admire the schools in Zambia for being so forward thinking in this initiative, in which children who live in areas affected by floods, Cholera, and even ‘political unrest’ can continue to learn their curriculum through ‘eLearning’ on computers or even, for younger children, on the radio.

In my ignorance, I didn’t think that Zambia had the kinds of resources outlined by John Zulu, such as iPods, flash disks and mobile phones. Upon learning this, I think that eLearning is a fantastic solution to the country’s problems. I am aware that technology is not quite as up-to-date as here, and children may have to travel to internet cafes to use computers, and as long as they continue to have the drive to succeed and continue with the work everyday, the initiative should benefit the country immensely. It will also tighten the education gap between people in poorer areas and people in more affluent parts of the country. It seems that children in African nations, as a generalisation, have much more of a desire to learn and don’t take education for granted as we so often do here.

I think the internet as a tool for learning both the dangers of Cholera and the steps to take to prevent it will help the country immensely if it develops. The steps that they are taking now to make the information known on the TV, radio and through mobile phones may help prevent the disease from taking over the lives of children and allowing them more face-to-face interactive learning, which is important for their development.

I think that as a nation we could learn from this kind of programme, it wouldn’t need to be on such a grand scale as we don’t suffer the same kinds of problems, but I think that all children and young adults should have a school or college email address that they can be contacted with any work they miss due to sickness or on those weeks where we get a bit of snow and everything shuts down. Saying this, there are actually some good eLearning websites that children can look at for revision purposes, but they are run by different governing bodies so cannot follow the curriculum as closely as the different types of eLearning does in Zambia.

As with China, there are drawbacks to this type of learning, such as the availability of resources and the fact that the system is not complete on all mediums. Also, I feel that interactive learning with a real teacher would be more beneficial for a child (although in no way am I a child psychologist or development expert) but when the choice is between eLearning and falling behind, it is the clear choice for a better educative system.