What Will Be in Those Lap Tops: Empowering Students and Teachers to Add Content to an Educational Chatbot's Knowledge Base

Patrick K Bii,J K Too

doi:10.13189/ujer.2016.040502

Patrick K Bii, J K Too

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2016.040502

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Abstract

The Government of Kenya has in the recent past been on a serious footing to put in place ICT initiatives and projects aimed at realizing the potential within its recognition of ICT as a foundation for a knowledge economy as per vision 2030. The tempo has risen several notches higher with the current intention and initiative of making available laptops to pupils and students in primary schools in the years to come. However, once computer hardware is available to schools as PC's, Laptops and other mobile computing devices, a critical issue which must be adequately addressed is the educational content within. This paper outlines a possible approach using open source software development concepts and the Participatory Action Research (PAR) model as a means of empowering students and teachers to become active developers of the content they consume.

Highlights

The Government of Kenya has in the recent past been on a serious footing to put in place ICT initiatives and projects aimed at realizing the potential within its recognition of ICT as a foundation for a knowledge economy as per vision 2030 [1, 2, 3]
This paper focuses on the critical issue of availing what will be in the laptops and other computers meant for educational use – educational software and content
Cautions to be considered in attempts to avail educational software to schools include not seeing the issue in terms of availing hardware alone, what software will be availed, the educational content of the software, scarcity of digitized content relevant to approved curriculum, and development of software that can extract content from school textbooks [6, 8 ].Further, Hepburn [10, p1] stated that

Summary

Continuing Efforts to Supply Computers for Educational Purposes

The Government of Kenya has in the recent past been on a serious footing to put in place ICT initiatives and projects aimed at realizing the potential within its recognition of ICT as a foundation for a knowledge economy as per vision 2030 [1, 2, 3]. Realistic cognizance of possible challenges to this initiative (and possible ways of surmounting the challenges) is pertinent, for as Anne [8, p1] has noted, “ever since the new government announced in their manifesto that they will be deploying laptops to standard 1 children in schools across Kenya, the big question on everyone’s mind is how will this program work? What would it take to make the idea work?” Some of the challenges include cost of hardware, cost of software, connectivity, infrastructure, pupil competencies, teacher competencies, school policies, administrative structures and cultures, hardware and software support systems, success metrics, security considerations, educational content, acceptance by teachers and society, danger of misappropriations, sustainability and business and commercial interests [4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11]. This paper focuses on the critical issue of availing what will be in the laptops and other computers meant for educational use – educational software and content

The Challenge of Availing Educational Software

Adding Content to An Educational Chatbot’s Knowledge Base

Knowie: A Concrete Example

Conclusions