Thelma Obakeng Seitshiro
The Computer Science Education Botswana held a two-day summit on the 30th and 31st March 2023 in an effort to create change towards providing inclusive computer science education for all in Botswana.
The summit brought together policymakers, government officials, industry leaders, universities, researchers, advocates, teachers and students.
Computer science education experts from the UK, Scotland, Netherlands and the USA were also present and presenting at the summit.
Keynote speaker, the Director of Center for Computer Science Education at the University of Glasgow, Professor Quintin Cutts emphasized the centrality of computer science education to everything we do, adding that it goes hand in hand with other subjects via computational thinking.
He said that the ability to understand the power of computation is what’s going to be driving economic growth, hence it is important for people to learn computer science and computational thinking in order to understand the huge changes happening in our world.
After a week in Botswana, he noticed how passionate the citizens are to fit into the digital landscape. He said it is important for the country to have an educated workforce and citizens who understand the discipline.
Computer science, which is about information processes, should be introduced as a modeling discipline of broad value in schools, he suggested.
Giving an overview, the Director of CSEd Botswana Dr. Ethel Tshukudu explained that computer science education helps solve problems, create critical minds and leaders of the digital world who can actually contribute towards digitisation.
She said for CSEd to be a success it needed to be supported by the curriculum, it needed trained teachers, supportive policies and partnerships to help support the mission.
As part of the CSEd movement, they trained teachers and facilitators and had what they called ‘hour of code’ where they went to schools and had an hour session of coding with the students.
The reason behind hour of code was to raise awareness that anyone can learn how to code if taught the right way, as well as to introduce students to coding since the current curriculum doesn’t have coding.
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Communications, Knowledge and Technology, Pontsho Pusoetsile mentioned that digitisation must be supported by requisite infrastructure.
To bridge the divide between the urban and rural, Pusoetsile said they are connecting Botswana through Wi-Fi connectivity in Kgotlas, schools, and health facilities across the country, as well as working on the mobility of public servants as core so that they can be able to assist Batswana anytime and from anywhere.
He stated that they had in place the ‘one government one people’ where there will be a link between all government departments and the citizens.
Deputy Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education and Skills Development, Lois Ngope talked about the Botswana computer science education strategy, saying that they had already distributed individual devices to students and teachers in all senior schools, as well as trained teachers on how to use them.
They plan to distribute the devices to junior schools, to the deaf, and eventually to primary schools. Their short term goals are to train teachers in basic operating skills so that they know how to use technology for teaching while students are taught how to use technology for learning as well as safely and responsibly.
Their long term goals include training teachers and students in computational thinking and teaching students basic coding from primary level.
There were panel discussions and break sessions around different topics like industry insights, global computer science education, curriculum and possible partnerships, among others, which concluded that a curriculum design that included curiosity must be designed and teacher training emphasised.
Some of the sponsors of the summit were DTC Botswana, the Ministry of Education and Skills Development, Avani, Ministry of Communications, Knowledge and Technology, DIY, Rhinoz Den and ServiceXcellence.
