ICT in Education/Change Projects/2015B Tanzania Using Smartphone Capability

Title of the change project : 'Using Smartphone Capability to Develop platform and English Contents for Primary/Secondary Education in Tanzania'

Change agent : 'Feruzi Hassan Mtali'

Email : feruzihm@gmail.com

Name of the organisation : University of Dodoma

Country : Tanzania

Started date :'June 2015'

Status (ongoing) :

1. Background of the project (problem): The use of Smartphone among the parents and students in Tanzania has been increased considerably. According to Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) Quarterly Telecoms Report for December 2014, the number of individual own Smartphone and subscribe for internet reach 7.72 million. This is due to number of reasons which include the need of using social networks programs such as Facebook, Tweeter, instagram, Whatsap and other social networking applications. Also the price for Smartphone is declining everyday especial those imported from China. On the other hand there is possibility of developing education contents that will be installed and integrated on those smart devices. With their easy internet access, a multitude of education-friendly apps, and the ability to be used at a moment’s notice (after all, what smartphone-owning teenager would go anywhere without their phone?), smartphones have all the tools necessary to boost student learning. For many years we have seen English Language is problems for Tanzanian student’s especially primary school students and secondary school students. We have been living with limited number of Teacher with good skills in English. Numbers of efforts have been initiated by Government to integrate ICT with education to reduce this problem. However there were some obstacles which hinder the government efforts including electricity in the remote area, awareness, higher price for computers and limitation of internet connections. Using Smartphone some of obstacle might not be an issue due to the fact that mobile phone operators cover all over the country. This Project Proposal aims at designing, development and deployment of interactive Android Application with content for teaching and learning English subjects in Primary and secondary Schools in Tanzania. The completion of this project will be used as a way in the efforts to integrate ICT in teaching and learning in Tanzania. The Application developed will be interactive and engaging so that students will be able to learn on their own. Smartphone’s and Internet Adoption in Tanzania Technology revolutions have led to a substantial decline in the cost of using internet services in the country, thanks to the government’s initiative to invest in the fibre optic technology. Due to the advent of internet-enabled mobile phones and lower bandwidth adaptation applications, particularly social media, drive the rapid diffusion and growth of smartphone adaptation mobile internet usage in various sectors of the economy.

According to mobile phone subscriber statistics from the recent Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) Quarterly Telecoms Report for December 2014, people in the country access internet services from three major outlets, namely internet cafes, organisations/institutions and households/individuals.

Over the past seven years (2008-2014), taking into account of internet users by subscription type, the majority of people accessed internet from organisations/institutions, which had the highest subscription followed by households/individual and finally internet cafes.

Between 2008 and 2011, the three sources in their order of preference were leading for having the largest and the lowest number of users. But from 2012 to 2014 there has been a turn of events in which households/individual subscriptions have outnumbered institutions by far.

For example, internet subscribers in the individual category jumped from 2.26 million in 2011 to 4.53 million in 2012, while people who accessed internet from organisation moved from 2.82 million in 2011 to 2.75 million in 2012.

In 2014, the number of individual subscription jumped to 7.72 million, while that from organisations reached 3.4 million.

Statement of the Problem 

Most of Tanzanian use Smartphone for social networking purpose. Researches by TWAWEZA shows that parents have no time to teach and assist their children in education. However they are not aware if you can use ICT in teaching and learning despite the effort made by government of Tanzania through the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training to integrate ICT in teaching and learning at different levels of the education. It is also experienced that there are many Tanzanian students cannot talk or write English despite the language of teaching and learning for Tanzania syllabus is English. This actually reduce the performance of students on other subjects, they are just memorizing without understanding the subject concepts. In Tanzania the language of Instruction for primary school is Swahili, while in secondary schools is English, this situation cause a lot of problems to students. The proposed application will help to merge the gape and help student to understand other subject. This project aims at designing and developing interactive mobile digital content based on the approved syllabi for teaching English in Secondary Schools. Completion of this project will help student to self learning and understand English language as base of understanding other subjects.

2. Objectives : The main objective of this project is to develop interactive system for teaching and learning English for Tanzania primary and secondary schools students. Specific Objectives To develop organized course contents and techniques for easy learning of English Language. To use existing contents (books, podcast, audio games video ) online and integrate it to the application platform . To develop responsive website to accommodate material, apps and important link. To use available free English learning Applications 3. Stakeholders :Students, parents,Teachers, school and ministry of Education

4. List of Activities :

Survey/Requirement gathering and analysis

• Review curriculum for primary school and secondary school.

• Search for free licensed teaching material from world wide web.

• Search for free licensed apps for teaching and learning English language

• Analyses and Specify relevant materials and apps

Designing

• Model easy ways of accessing learning material

• Model website

• Design database

Implementation

• Implement website and database

• Edit learning Material

• Upload learning material

• Design assignment, quiz, and exercise and integrate on learning material.

• Uploading mobile apps and add links to Best App.

Experiment

Conduct experiment in selected school

Seminars and Workshop

• Training Teachers and school managers

• Training parents

• Train student.

Broadcasting

Publicize on TV and Radio

5. Expected result ; 

  The Project will have the following payback to our education sector:

i. The project will solve the issue of understanding English language among Tanzania students which has direct impact on the performance of other subject.

ii. Need of skilled teacher to teach English language will be reduced.

iii. Application can be used even by other non students.

iv. The content will help students to bridge to the next educational level (high school and higher education) with ease as these levels require basic knowledge in ICT and hence reducing digital divide in the country.

v. Learning anywhere, any time in a convenient ways.

vi. English is the language of international business, learning English will help to interact with the world.

6.  Actual result  :

7. The Project organisation :

s/No Name------------------------------Role

1 Feruzi H. Mtali -------------Manager

2 English Professor----------------- Content originator and Editor

3 Mansour Hassan--------------------Android Developer

4 Teachers---------------------------user

5 Parrent ---------------------------user

Student ---------------------------user

Last Updated : 22/09/2015