The Edo State Government has concluded plans to collaborate with Google and Gidimobile, an African mobile learning platform, to provide an educational application called Gidimo for at least 20,000 Senior Secondary School pupils in the state to improve learning outcomes.
The partnership, according to a statement, is anchored by Edojobs, the state government’s job creation and skills development initiative, which will work with the companies to mobilise no fewer than 150 teachers and National Youth Service Corps members, who will serve as “activators” to deliver the mobile software to the students.
The Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Skills Development and Job Creation, Mrs Ukinebo Dare, who spoke to journalists, said the partnership was aimed at providing innovative learning solutions to secondary school students and empowering those who would work as activators across the state.
Dare stated that the programme was the offshoot of Gidimo’s roll-out to 100,000 disadvantaged youths across the world, after winning a $1m grant from Google.org.
She added that the deployment of the software would be piloted in Edo State before being rolled out across the country.
She said, “To start the campaign in Edo State, 20,000 students will be granted free access to the Gidimo application for a period of one year.
“Forty-five minutes to one-hour playtime after school (Monday to Saturday) will be needed to cover the syllabus, after which each user gets 300MB of data at the completion of their syllabus weekly.
“A competition among users/students with the application will be held every week, with the best user rewarded.”
She said the activators would be assigned to schools for the exercise to sensitise students to how to access and use the app for free.
“This will come with a small remuneration (about N16,000) from funds allotted to data in the grant received from Google. The app will also allow for activators to earn some money from the retail sales/activation they do.
“A sample of 5-10 public schools in the state will be selected to pilot the campaign. The academic performance of students using the Gidimo app in these schools will be compared with those not using the application to identify the efficacy of the application on the students under survey.”
“A national competition will be held weekly across various subjects on the application. This could be on an organised event platform, which could be used to spread the government’s message on its effort towards improving the educational sector in the state,” Dare added.
https://punchng.com/edo-partners-google-to-empower-20000-pupils/