The Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) has advised teachers in the country are to use the current lockdown period to become digitally literate.
Professor Josiah Ajiboye, Registrar of the Council, said with the current lockdown, which has disrupted normal academic activities with students and their teachers confined to their houses due to COVID-19 pandemic, most teachers now have to rely more on governments’ e-lessons intervention on TV and radio to reach out to their students.
Ajiboye, however, said this situation has really exposed the present poor state of preparedness and knowledge of majority of Nigerian teachers as regards digital literacy and equipment.
He said there are still lots of Nigerian teachers, especially in the remote communities, who cannot operate computers let alone use the internet to reach their students.
“If majority of teachers are digitally literates and equipped with devices like their counterparts in the developed countries, they would have easily continued imparting knowledge and skills on their students from home.
“That is why to us in TRCN, this current lockdown is a wake-up call for us as a country. This is because if teachers are digitally literate, it will revolutionise the teaching profession and change the all-time narrative of physical face-to-face classroom arrangement between teachers and their students in the country. It will no longer be mandatory for teachers to be physically present in class before they can reach out to their students.
“That is the best global practice and the world will not wait for us on this nor any other as an individual and as a country,” Ajiboye said.
