We were extremely proud to announce that Julius Munene, a maths and physics teacher at Thome Boys’ Secondary School in Laikipia was a National finalist at the ICT Integration Teacher of the Year Awards (I-ToYA) last month. He faced stiff competition along the way. To reach this stage, Julius had to win the zonals, sub county, county and Rift Valley region ICT teacher competitions.

In May, Julius won best ICT Teacher in the Rift Valley, meaning he could carry on to the nationals, which were held in Mombasa between June 11th - 15th 2018. In the end, he was recognised as one of the top 6 teachers who use ICT nationally, a truly significant achievement, and won a laptop, trophy and other assorted prizes.

Thome Boys teacher, Mr Julius Munene(extreme left) at the gala.

Julius had been working closely with Nicholas Njogu, the Ol Pejeta Teacher Support Officer. For the past two years, Nicholas has been focusing on enhancing ICT usage in community schools and has since seen a marked improvement in the performance of the students, particularly in science and maths. This can be directly attributed to the equipment and training we provided.

We have also seen a considerable perception shift among the teachers when it comes to using ICT in lesson delivery. Having seen how useful technology can be, more teachers are buying their own computers for use in teaching. By facilitating the use of ICT in schools, we are able to help students get the requisite content to make them excel in their studies as well as to deliver conservation messaging to them in an interactive manner.

Currently, we offer ICT integration services in 12 schools and our goal is to eventually scale this up to all 36 schools that are supported by Ol Pejeta