Tomorrow, the Federal Ministry of Education (FME) is launching Nigeria Learning Passport (NLP), the Nigerian version of Microsoft’s Learning Passport which is globally used to provide on the internet standardised content and instruction for children, students as well as teachers at all levels of learning.
Opportunity
I am tempted to call NLP a silver bullet because it is here to solve so many problems by the time it is fully adopted in our public and private schools. That was my conclusion when I returned from a four day workshop on the NLP in Abuja five weeks ago. We just gathered stakeholders in Education two days ago and introduced the platform to them.
The degree of readiness of the NLP and speed of its accessibility is amazing. By yesterday, just a day after, a volunteer teacher was captured using it for his students at far away Government Day Secondary School, Gololo. Just few paragraphs down from here, you the reader will also be there—with just a click.
The NLP provides the literature and videos our students and teachers need on every topic in their syllabus. It mitigates the problems of lack or high cost of books, insufficient teachers, teacher absence, unqualified teachers, distance issues in remote areas, security challenges for nomadic and crisis-ridden areas which teachers cannot reach or whose schools cannot open, etc.
What we need to do immediately is to start the march and meet each problem at its station, where we will tackle it and move forward, and forward and forward, until the era of education decadence is over. We must not be afraid of digital learning. It is here to stay and outlive us. The NLP is the first step
Flexibility
What is really interesting is the timeless access that our children can have to some of the best teachers both globally and nationally. This will tackle the problem of poor quality instruction that characterizes our education system. What a teacher cannot provide his students with himself, he can arrange for someone better than to do it. That “digital teacher”, with just a click on the keyboard, can also willingly sit in for the teacher when he is absent. The child can switch on his kindle, tablet, computer or handset to watch this alternate teacher conduct lessons on any topic the child chooses and “play him” time without number until he fully understands the topic. The child can do this even as he rears his cattle in the forest or attends to customers in his apprentice shop in the heart of the city. Not to mention remote public schools with only few teachers. Knowledge everywhere.
To define its flexibility, three teaching approaches to learning are provided on the NLP platform: the independent, the collaborative and the whole class. Under each are different types of adaptive strategies that can be used to suit learning situations.
Both public and private schools can create digital classrooms and fit them with projectors, screens and computers for viewing digital lessons. The same with digital libraries fitted with computers and earphones for students to come, sit, listen and watch. This will mitigate shortages of quality teachers and materials that is common in almost all schools in the country.
This is not to mention access on the more ubiquitous personal devices like tablets and smartphones. For any serious student or parent, a substitution of social media time for digital learning hours will be very rewarding.
The platform also offers opportunities for active participation of teachers in lesson preparation and delivery and of school and education administrators in areas administration and information management systems.
Tsunami
NLP, through the opportunity of blended lessons it offers, is our gateway to the coming tsunami of digital learning which will revolutionize tertiary education in particular. The problems of congested lecture halls, few hostels and hazard of living off-campus, poor quality lecturers and endless strikes, outmoded libraries, archaic lecture notes, etc, will all be swept away into the ocean of history. The NLP heralds this long awaited cleansing of our education landscape.
Challenges
While welcoming the NLP, we must not be oblivious of its many challenges. It challenges us to provide the infrastructure that will provide continuous availability of the online material, devices to the electronic media that children and students will use to access the content, the power and data required to operate them, the teacher capacity needed to guide children in its use, the motivation to use the facility in blended environment by teachers and parents, the sharp attention and time of the African child who is given to absent-mindedness, noise, play, football, films, social media, etc.
These are NLP challenges for all stakeholders. Not withstanding their number, I have no doubt that they will eventually be met when teachers and parents capture the essence of the opportunities it provides; when governments, in addition to parents and intervention agencies, make the promotion of digital learning the focus of their campaign and provision of alternative energy, digital infrastructure and devices to schools and children form the major item of their education budget; when teachers pick up interest to learn new methods and enjoy to celebrate their outcomes as expressed in the success of their students, etc.
What we need to do immediately is to start the march and meet each problem at its station, where we will tackle it and move forward, and forward and forward, until the era of education decadence is over. We must not be afraid of digital learning. It is here to stay and outlive us. The NLP is the first step. The FME in conjunction with UNICEF is launching it tomorrow after assiduously working on it over the past two years. The states should follow suit and get parents, teachers and students engaged right away.
Let’s Go
As it is with digital learning, the democracy of choice is embedded in the NLP. You don’t need any approval, admission, qualifying exams or even money to start it as an individual. All you need is a telephone number as an identity and you are good to go. Click here and subscribe within a minute or so—and a whole world of learning is at your fingertips:
https://nlp.education.gov.ng
Appreciation
At every time you use the NLP platform, please do not forget to appreciate the ingenuity of Bill Gates in building the platform, the age-long assistance of UNICEF and the commitment of the team at the Federal Ministry of Education to contrive the idea, funding from Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and enabling the process successfully.
Launching
If you are in Abuja, grace the occasion tomorrow, 24 March 2022, at Congress Hall, Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, at 10am to 12.30pm.
God bless you.
* Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde is the Commissioner of Education, Bauchi State
