…aims to give Nigerian children relevant and valuable education.
Alex Onyia, chief executive officer of Educare, has revealed his plans to collaborate with global partners for a top-notch STEM curriculum and programme that will expose Nigerian children to relevant and valuable skills for today’s world and the future.
Onyia disclosed this through his official X handle @winexviv, when he stated, “Part of my trip to Switzerland and Eindhoven in January was to scout for a global partner to develop a world-class STEM curriculum and program for Nigerian children.
“The goal is for Nigeria, our children need to learn relevant things so they can be valuable in the world of today and the future.”
Read also: Here are 7 countries churning out the most STEM graduates
The edutech expert further revealed that he met an organisation that offers the programme in schools across the entire Europe, the UK, the US and Canada.
“We have started designing for Nigeria using the global standard and also developed a simplified lesson plan for teachers to learn and deliver them. This will be revolutionary,” he noted.
Onyia explained that the new STEM curriculum and programme will cut across children from primary one to senior secondary three (SS3) students.
He said the planned curriculum and programme will make it possible to teach parts of a computer only to children in primary one and the students should be introduced to block programming as well.
According to him, “By SS3 students should be programming geniuses.
Programming significantly improves the cognitive abilities of children, therefore increasing their IQ and making them more intelligent.”
Moreover, Onyia explained that this is a partnership with his organisation Educare and that they will make the formal announcement in the coming days or weeks.
Read also: Top 5 countries that are best for STEM courses
Part of what the proposed curriculum would have as sighted by BusinessDay includes digital discovery basic normal, which would expose beginners courses such as developing algorithmic thinking to enable them to use creative problem-solving skills to break down digital tasks and everyday situations into logical steps.
Besides, to learn how to create digital drawings using Microsoft paint, and become familiar with basic concepts of structured programming.
Other prospective skills are using a block-based programming environment with built-in graphical elements and moving built-in actors on a 112 x 63 stage, where the 0.0 coordinate is located in the bottom left corner; and understanding the importance of personal data protection, basics of cyber security, and netiquette, among others.
Nigerians react
Franklin Chinedum counselled him to get in touch with the federal government to make his effort more impactful.
Commenting via his official X handle @FrankNedumNwoko, he stated, “It’s not yet too late. Please get the federal government and its Ministry of Education to buy into this.
“Year in, year out, progressive scholars are always on different platforms canvassing for this, but the Ministry of education turns deaf ears.”
Another Nigerian who commented, said, “Your intention may be great, but for a project like this, you’ve to involve some critical stakeholders. If you’re targeting a selected school, it’s okay. It may just be an add-on, an extra-curriculum at best. Process matters so much when it comes to educational innovation.”
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