Thursday, 8th March 2018, Mr Karamo Bojang, the Principal of Nusrat Senior Secondary School held the school’s first ever press conference to inform the general public about the inauguration of our latest innovation to introduce Computer Based Examination. As you know, in Nusrat Senior Secondary School we have online registration and that students view their results online. There are no report books or cards to be sent home and returned or whatnot. Every parent or guardian can now sit in their house or office and; register their child into Nusrat, view their child’s attendance, view their child’s results, view their child’s disciplinary record and so on.
Now, the innovative Mr Bojang (I call him the Teacher Par Excellence) felt that the next step should be to gradually eliminate paper-based examinations. This is tedious and vulnerable to cheating and examination malpractices. Also, it is very expensive on the school and very cumbersome for teachers who have to mark each paper manually, enter the marks on a merit lists, broadsheets, and finally report cards. With the new initiative, all one needs to do is sit over a computer and it will automatically generate random questions for you to write. The machine then does the marking, collating and result is generated.
Mr. President, the world is moving rapidly towards technology in every field of human interest. The advancement in technology has made it possible for things which were hitherto thought to be impossible to become very simple and easy indeed. If we wish to develop and not be left behind, we must embrace this trend and incorporate it in our education system. We cannot afford to be the dinosaurs of the world when it comes to educations.
With this new trend, soon we will have all things that are beneficial brought to the doorstep of Gambians – or better still, as close as a click of a button. The government must look into this and ensure that all schools embrace technology in their work; teaching and learning, examinations and assessment, registration and all other areas of schooling.
If we do this, we will be able to develop our mathematics and sciences which are the keys to development. We will have access to millions, if not billions, of resources which are available online. There are millions of online libraries (with billions of books) most of which are not available to most of us in Africa at the moment. To make any headways in this endeavor; however, Mr President, the government must work on the provision of cheap, fast and accessible Internet connections in our country. At the moment, the Internet is very slow and available mainly in the urban areas of the country leaving the rural Gambia out. We must seek to fix this and quickly.
Have a Good Day Mr President…
Tha Scribbler Bah
A Concerned Citizen