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Innovations with creativity is the cornerstone of progressive and functional education, said Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi.
Abdullahi while speaking at the recent National Conference on Functional Education at Bilyaminu Polytechnic, Hadejia, Jigawa state, stressed the importance of seeking “to explore the benefits of innovations and creativity in order to bring about functional education system for the country.”
According to him, the COVID-19 lockdown has demonstrated that the future of education is in innovation and creativity. Lockdowns across the globe forced governments and policy makers to rework education deliveries by leveraging on advancements in technology to ensure teaching and learning continued.
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His words: “Platforms like Edtech have become a global phenomenon that integrates strategies, instructional practices in education and digital tools to bring about the emerging trends that demonstrators in academia apply to build knowledge-based society.”
He noted that other platforms that could be handy includes; Artificial Intelligence, Internet of things, 5G technology, Blockchain, Virtual and mix realities, among others.
Abdullahi said Nigeria is warehousing about 28% of education technology companies on the African continent with technology startups generating about 3.46million United States dollars in 2020.
This, he added, signifies that the country is not left behind in innovations and creativity in the education sector to support sustainable development across sectors.
He said NITDA had already identified innovations and creativity as critical tools for implementing the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS), designed to promote Nigeria’s prosperity.
NITDA’s launching of the National Adopted School for Smart Education initiative is in line with these goals. The National Adopted School for Smart Education seeks to inculcate the use of technology in teaching and learning to promote expansive access to quality education especially at the grassroots.
According to him, NITDA is now entrenching co-creation education approach by ensuring that teaching methods shift from traditional and uni-directional to a process that allows both the teacher and students create value together through digital technologies and innovations platforms for sharing learning resource.
The Rector, Binyaminu Polytechnic, Professor Zulkiflu Abdu, while addressing the participants, noted that Nigeria’s multifaceted development challenges can be addressed by the adoption of research based technological innovations and creativity in the education sector.
He describd the theme of the event: ‘Functional Education and Demand Research for sustainable Development’, as “apt and timely” even as he commended the NITDA’s boss for the agency’s efforts at leveraging technologies to address series of challenges during the COVID-19 lockdown.
The conference was organized by the Center for Semi-Arid Research and Development.
