ICT and education : enabling two rural western Kenyan schools to exploit information technology

Abstract

The study was undertaken to evaluate the implementation of ICT to support learning, teaching, school administration and use of E-communication between cooperating rural secondary schools in Western Kenya under the Rotary project, Forssa Rotary Club of Finland District 1410. The study was conducted in two selected rural schools namely: Anin secondary school (Keiyo County) and Cheplaskei secondary school (Uasin-Gishu County) under a Finnish project "Enabling rural Western Kenyan schools to exploit information technology" funded by the Suomen Rotaryn between May 2007-December 2009. A case study research design was adopted for this study where interviews, observation and open-ended questionnaires including document analysis were used to collect qualitative data. The respondents interviewed in each school were mainly head teachers, ICT instructors, ICT technicians, teachers (4), students (7), and Board of Governors (BOG) and Parents Teachers Association (PTA) members (2).The findings indicate that largely the initial objectives of the project had been realized. Teachers, students and the school administrators were now using computers to access educational resource material from the Internet, prepare and process examination results, manage, monitor and process financial reports, and communicate using email. There was also evidence that quality of teaching, learning and students' level of interaction, reasoning, recall, synthesis and evaluation had improved tremendously. School discipline and student sense of self-esteem and pride had significantly been enhanced.