Expensive mobile phones are a liability to teachers, information and communication technology (ICT) said state minister Alintuma Nsambu. Nsambu encouraged teachers to instead invest in cheap computers that would help them move with the modern technological trends. 'That flashy phone can have more features than a computer but cannot do certain things. It can also be easily stolen and you go back to zero,' he said. Nsambu argued that teachers with computers would be able to cope with the learning level of some of their students who have such facilities at their homes. 'Students are learning via the Internet. It will be difficult for a computer-illiterate teacher to stand in front of such children,' he cautioned.
Nsambu was on Friday opening a stakeholders' workshop on the implementation of the secondary schools ICT computer laboratory project at Nile Resort Hotel in Jinja. The inter-ministerial arrangement bringing together the education and ICT ministries was organised under the rural communications development fund of the Uganda Communications Commission. Robert Ssebukwu, the education ministry commissioner for ICT, said teachers had been offered refurbished computers at sh300,000.
