By Our Reporter
Students from various universities across East Africa have been advised to embrace open education and digital literacy as way of enhancing their digital knowledge and simplifying ways of learning. In the coming years, school systems will completely change, books will be outdated in most institutions as everything needed for learning will be found online.
This was echoed by Vodafone Chief Technical Officer (CTO) Derrick Sebbaale at the just concluded Mozilla Festival which took place from July 16th to 19th at Victoria University.
While addressing hundreds of ICT students, Sebbaale said advancement in information technology has revolutionized how people communicate and learn in nearly every aspect of modern life except for education.
“Digital literacy is today’s reality. We live in an era where information about almost anything and everything can be found online. This has changed the way we interact with information and knowledge and presents an opportunity for empowerment,” Sebbaale said, adding that all those who are still students are very lucky to have been born in this generation where technology has eased the way of life.
He advised application developers to come up with great innovations which they can leverageto make money. “You need to identify a need and develop an app that can address that need and also enable you earn from the innovation. But as long as you focus on ideas that change lives, you cannot go wrong,” he added.
When asked why Vodafone sponsored the Mozilla Festival 2015, Sebbaale explained that the Mozilla festival is about focusing on disruptive education technologies, culture and web literacy. This ties in well Vodafone’s passion for the transformative power of technology.
“Technology on its own it doesn’t mean much unless its transformative power is applied. This can only be achieved through application of disruptive tools. It must challenge us into thinking differently about life and how we can adapt and evolve,” he said.
Mozilla Festival East Africa (MozFestEA) is an annual event held in Kampala, Uganda. It is organized by Mozilla Uganda Community with support from the MozFest London team and the Mozilla Foundation. It brings together different groups of people to build open innovative solutions and to brainstorm ideas that provide remedies to the current challenges faced by East Africa with the help of the web as a platform and web literacy.
There were several sessions that included education, open data, open technologies, security, open data, digital literacy, social innovation, the web and culture.
Mozilla Uganda has a wide pool of experienced developers, tech enthusiasts, professionals, and youth. In the last 2 years alone, the team successfully organized more than 50 events, trained over 600 webmaker mentors, 175 super mentors, 10,000 students in schools and universities as well as people from various institutions during school tours, and maker parties, equipping them with digital literacy skills using our tools like popcorn, thimble and X-ray goggles.
After 5 years, Mozilla Uganda has begun expanding beyond its original confines to reach more people with the Mozilla objectives and opportunities. In order to deliver to its mandate, starting last year, Mozilla Uganda begun to hold an annual technological event, dubbed the Mozilla Festival East Africa.