Rwanda Basic Education Board with World Bank funding through “Rwanda’s Quality Basic Education for the Human Capital Development” project, is training pre-primary and primary school teachers with digital literacy skills in all districts countrywide.

In thirty districts of Rwanda, a considerable number of schools has ICT tools such as computers, projectors and other ICT gadgets that help learners and teachers to reach their target in a modern way regarding 2050 vision of Rwanda where Rwanda will be a Global Competitive Knowledge-based Economy. This cannot be possible without the government and its partners’ efforts to train in service teachers by enabling them not only delivering and share contents but also to be ICT skilled.

The Ag. Head of ICT in Education Department Mrs. Diane UWASENGA SENGATI said that Digital literacy training is not only put in place to empower teachers to use technology effectively in the classroom but also enables teachers to proficiently use the Microsoft products at their disposal. Digital literacy does not mean knowing how to use every piece of software student will encounter. Teachers should encourage students to seek out and learn the software they need to know practicing what is required. 

Digitally literate teachers have a different perspective of technology as a tool for potential creativity and innovation, digital literacy does not require that teachers become experts, but it requires that they understand the digital tools that can unlock their deep teaching potential. She added

In the interviews with head teachers and teachers from different training centers, they are very happy of being trained on digital literacy; many more others got surprised to be part of the trainings since some of them could see computer as somebody’s material yet they are at their work place.

BARYAZAHE Diome, headmaster of G.S SHONGA said that Digital Literacy has come on time where teachers are celebrating to have such training at their nearest places. He argues that these trainings will solve some challenges they encounter and affect their ways of teaching and will serve their students to uplifting them from one level up to another.

“Digital literacy will help teachers and the whole staff to accomplish the work of teaching on time and effectively. We, school leaders, usually ask teachers to bring reports in the office but we could do it in analogue way whereby every report was written with a pen, yet computers are at their disposal”. He said

With digital literacy training, a teacher will be able to make a report form at the end of the term, prepare his/her lessons using a computer, make a research regarding the subject to teach, fetch available REB online books as additional sources of content to teach, downloading different images for lesson clarifications as teaching aids. This will also boost ICT skills as it is required. Teachers are now capable to create a platform where they can communicate among themselves through email, send messages and reports through ICT skills acquired. He added  

NAHIMANA Bosco is a teacher at G.S NYAGATARE as a training center in Nyagatare District. Bosco is very happy and satisfied with acquired skills he got from ICT skills and thanked whoever contributed to the trainings to happen.

“At first, I couldn’t believe that my name is on the list of those who will attend training. I could count days and hours for it to start and I enjoy computer because I had no idea about it. A young man like me, it was a challenge to organize any work on a computer where I could ask my colleagues to do it for me. For instance the time of making report forms, doing given assignments from head master, it was a struggle and I was really behind in ICT usage but now I can create an email, organize the work using Microsoft Word, Excel and Power point presentation, downloading books from Rwanda Basic Education Board online platform, I can research for my lessons such as visiting different websites and online platforms where I get current news”.

Digital literacy will help us to teach our students very well regarding where the world is heading. With acquired knowledge I shall help my workmates who are still waiting for their turn to be trained with a mission of helping them to attend training with basic skills. He added

Bloom's Taxonomy is a hierarchical ordering of cognitive skills that can help teachers and students in the classroom. This framework is important for designing a learning experience because it helps instructors identify, classify, and outline what students are expected to learn in the course. Bloom's taxonomy is a set of three hierarchical models used for classification of educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. The three lists cover the learning objectives in cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains.

Simply Googling and answer does not provide learners with true, deep learning. While most students understand how to use a search engine, it is up to teachers to provide students with the additional skills to bring the answer to the next level. Teachers will help students to use information to create something new; examine information and make judgement; breaking the information into parts and understand them; use information in a new situation; making sense of the information and recalling knowledge from long term memory.