The Sunday Mail
Richard Muponde
THE Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education will soon introduce smart classrooms that will offer tablets and computers to learners in primary and secondary schools to impart skills in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and coding.
This was revealed by Primary and Secondary Education Minister Torerayi Moyo while responding to a question by Chief Mathuphula in the Senate on Thursday.
He was asked what his ministry was doing to implement Education 5.0, especially in rural areas.
“We will soon be rolling out tablets, laptops and desk computers from Grade One to Form Six, where learners are going to be imparted with skills of coding, robotics and AI. This will ensure that they are going to address societal challenges, be creative and find problem-solving skills,” Minister Moyo said.
His ministry, he said, had introduced heritage-based education in primary and secondary schools to harmonise it with Education 5.0.
“Heritage-based education’s major objective is to produce an African child who is suitable for the 21st century and some of the things that we inculcate in our learners is the issue of critical thinking skills.
“We want our learners to be highly innovative and be able to identify societal challenges that are affecting our communities in both our rural and urban areas. When they identify the societal challenge, they can do research and find solutions to the problems.”
He said in line with this vision, some learners in Mashonaland West province had come up with an irrigation infrastructure innovation that can be remotely controlled even when one is out of the country.
“They have demonstrated that even when one is a farmer based in South Africa, he or she can use remote control skills to send some codes to Zimbabwe and the water pump will respond positively, leading to irrigation. It can also indicate that Plot A should be irrigated for a specified period. Therefore, this is an innovation which is very important in ensuring that those learners are going to be capacitated,” he said.
Minister Moyo said the ministry will also train teachers to be adept in the new expectations.
“A lot of training will be given to those teachers so that they can give the requisite skills and competencies in our learning sector,” Minister Moyo said.
ZANU PF’s Manicaland Senator Irene Zindi also asked how the Government would ensure internet connectivity in rural areas.
Minister Moyo said through the satellite technology the Government has adopted, learning institutions will not require internet data.
“I appreciate that in the past, there were disparities in terms of internet connectivity between urban schools and rural schools. We have started introducing the Internet-in-a Box, where we are going to instal a server at the administration block,” he said.
“That server will not use Wi-Fi. It is a server deployed to the administration block and any learner within a radius of 200 metres will be able to access notes uploaded by the teacher.”
The Minister added: “The teacher will upload information and the learners can access the teaching-learning materials from that server … through the use of geospatial information from our sister, the Ministry of Higher (and Tertiary) Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development), where we are embracing the satellite system, which may not even require the use of data and so forth.”
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