TIE to digitise 19,000 public school libraries
What you need to know:
- The rollout of the e-library, scheduled to take place in the next three years, aims to enhance the accessibility and quality of educational resources for 11 million students across Tanzania
Dar es Salaam. The Tanzania Institute for Education (TIE) has partnered with education tech company Snapplify to digitise libraries in 19,000 public schools.
The rollout of the e-library, scheduled to take place in the next three years, aims to enhance the accessibility and quality of educational resources for 11 million students across Tanzania.
According to Snapplify government partnerships manager, Mr Stephen Bestbier, the project will also involve 200,000 teachers.
He said the partnership targets providing digital access to both prescribed and supplementary education resources across Tanzania.
He noted that they will be establishing an e-library in every government school and creating digital accounts for all schools across Tanzania. The accounts will give students access to hundreds of digital education materials.
“Most students don’t have a digital identity to engage in digital tools, but we can empower them to access those resources,” he said in an interview.
Mr Bestbier said the e-library is available to all government institutions globally, and normally they work on a district and regional basis.
According to him, the company provides an individually customised library for each school with tools they would be able to access, while the 11 million children are provided with an identity and password to access the libraries and read books through their devices.
He noted that they also train various stakeholders to realise the full potential of the platform, adding that TIE will make their authorised content available in the library, where even remote areas will have access to the content.
He said the library will have various materials, including supplementary textbooks, study guides, and leisure reading, among others.
According to him, the library lowers costs by providing access to quality educational content as well as local language content, which is critical for fostering local pride and identity in Tanzanian children.
“Having access to content is critical for quality education, and generally, libraries and the distribution of content favour urban environments, but what we look to do is provide authorised content countrywide,” he said, adding that the initiative looks to change culture by providing resources that, over time, children will like to read.
