By STEPHEN KAPAMBWE –
In 2014, England became the first country in the world to mandate computer programming in primary and Secondary schools.
Prior to this, Journalist Sophie Curtis described in The Telegraph newspaper of the UK how the programme would affect English school pupils.
“Children will start learning to write code (computer programmes) when they enter school at the age of five, and will not stop until at least 16, when they finish their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE).
“By the end of stage one, pupils will be expected to create and debug simple programmes as well as use technology safely and respectfully.
By the time they reach stage two, pupils will be taught how to design and write programmes that accomplish specific goals, including controlling or simulating physical systems.
“They will also learn how to understand computer networks and use logical reasoning to detect and correct errors.,”Sophie wrote in an article entitled ‘Teaching our children to code: a quiet revolution.’
In that article, Sophie quoted UK Education Secretary Michael Gove who said: “For the first time children will be learning to programme computers. It will raise standards across the board – and allow our children to compete in the global race.”
A month or so before The Telegraph article was published, UK based Director of ICT at The Lady Eleanor Holles School, Matt Britland told The Guardian newspaper that, “I have just finished a trial to see if using them (iPads) really does support teaching and learning – and they have proved effective.”
In an article entitled, ‘What is the future of technology in education?’ Britland, who is also a director of education consultancy, Realise Learning, and a blogger, said iPads and other mobile technology are the ‘now’.
“Although, they will play a part in the future, four years ago, the iPad didn’t even exist. We don’t know what will be the current technology in another four. Perhaps it will be wearable devices such as Google Glass, although I suspect that tablets will still be used in education,” he said.
These  articles in the two newspapers signify how some countries in the world relate technology to the development of young people.
This counters the widespread view of most parents in Zambia that smartphones, television, the Internet and other technological advances are an affront to the development of young people.
“The uncontrolled use of electronic gadgets such as (smart) phones and computers has immensely contributed to youth decay”,’ wrote a clergyman from Ndola in a Letter to the Editor published in the Times of Zambia recently.
‘The academic, spiritual, moral and noetic (cognitive) faculties are dulled like never before because of the abuse of these electronic gadgets,’ he wrote, adding, ‘The warning is, if you continue using these gadgets at the expense of your academic studies and other positive activities, you will “rot”.’
This clergyman is not the only one with such strong views about the exposure of young people to technology.
Only a week or so ago, the author of this story listened to a radio talk show aired on one of the channels of State radio, ZNBC, where a panel of discussants cited how school pupils are given to flirting, peer pressure, underage beer drinking and lawlessness owing to the proliferation of smart phones, tablets, and Internet enabled gadgets.
Even some of those training to teach in schools believe technology is bad for young people.
Nkrumah Teachers Training University College student Zenia Phiri who is on her teaching practice at Parklands high school in Chilanga says, young people derive no benefit from technological gadgets like phones and the Internet.
She believes that even though such technologies can be used for educational purposes like research, young people only use them for social interaction.
“Young people have these gadgets even in class but they hide them. You only see them when they knock off and the only thing they use them for is listen to music, do Whatsapp and not research. So for me, these gadgets are not helpful,” she said.
The question then arises, is technology bad for young people?
Notwithstanding the risk of exposure to certain undesirable side effects of abusing technology, like pornography, possible contact with Jihadists recruiting young people for extremism and other things that the Internet, for example, is fraught with, the author of this story turned to a young man who has put the cell phone to good use.
A few years ago, University of Zambia (UNZA) student Brighton Mukupa helped the United Nations International  Childrens’ Fund (UNICEF) and the National AIDS Council (NAC) to design a cost effective method of providing HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) related information to adolescents and young people.
The initiative was aimed at encouraging young people to desist from experimenting with their lives by sourcing information from trusted sources.
The programme was necessitated by fear of stigma and peer pressure which often discouraged young people from visiting health centres to openly seek HIV/AIDS and (STIs) related information and services.
The challenge was to devise a platform where young people could anonymously access verifiable information without fear and without the need to go anywhere.
That is how  the 20-year-old Mukupa, a second year Development Studies student, assisted to create a youth-led platform dubbed Zambia U-Report which has since gone viral, growing from 1,000 signups in 2012 to over 64,000 currently.
The report is a cell phone based platform that uses the short messaging system (SMS) to provide young people with information on HIV/AIDS and STIs.
Mukupa said as a result of the innovation, young people, including himself, are able to use mobile phones to access free, confidential, and timely information on the causes, dangers and effects of HIV/AIDS and other sexual reproductive health issues using the Zambia U-Report SMS engagement platform.
“I know the internet has it’s down-side, but I agree that young people should have smart phones (with Internet access) for educational purposes because the Internet has been considered as a way of enhancing people’s quality of life by reducing stress, saving time and most especially being cost effective.
“These days, does one  rarely  find a young person who does not have a computer or access to a smart phone since it has become part and parcel of everyone’s life in this dot.com generation?,” Brighton said.
He said students at institutions like UNZA are using the Internet for research purposes because it is beneficial to their studies, time saving and cost effective, since they do not have to buy stacks of
books. The Internet is also user friendly compared to traditional research methods.
“It is amazing to discover that students can access various materials at the click of a button for their work and reference purposes on all sorts of topics. This great invention has created a great technological revolution in education,” he said.
The UNICEF youth envoy was recently in Chipata where he took part in training child climate ambassadors on the use of the Internet.org application for learning purposes.
Mukupa is not the only one relying on technology to impact people’s lives.
The Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) has long realised the importance of technology in general and Information Communication Technologies (ITCs) in particular, to agriculture.
Today, the union employs two mobile phone based technologies in getting information pertaining to crop markets, prices and agriculture extension services to farmers.
The e-Extension system provides farmers with agriculture extension related information without the physical presence of an agriculture extension worker.
This system was developed as an alternative to the physical presence of agriculture extension officers whose numbers are often insufficient to carter for all farmers. The platform is meant to improve information flow to farmers.
The union has also developed the ZNFU 4455, another SMS based platform that provides farmers with information about the market price of various products obtaining on the market. With this innovation, farmers can know prices obtaining on the market even before they take their produce for sale.
These are  just but  a few innovations the ZNFU has employed to overcome the numerous barriers that farmers in the past faced in running their activities profitably.
This means knowledge of technology for young people planning to run farms in future. they will understand that using these SMS based systems, is critical to their success. Besides that, Internet enabled smart phones and computers are coming with inbuilt applications that provide information on things like weather which is critical to farming. Gone are the days when people solely relied on weather updates from the Metrological Department via state television, ZNBC.
Such updates could not be accessed in areas where the ZNBC television signal is inaccessible. But with the Internet, weather updates are available at the touch of a button on a phone or a computer.
However, it is not only farming which has embraced technology.
In the last 20 years, journalism has evolved from relying on manual and, later on, electronic typewriters to have news stories prepared.
Journalists today are filing news via Internet enabled Black Berry (BB) smart phones and laptops right from the news scene.
In this age, it would seem laughable to imagine that journalists of yester year relied on things like a public payphone to file news stories from the field.
In those days, news photographers or photo-journalists, ran around with manually operated cameras that used film rolls. The film had to be processed, developed and hard copy photographs printed in the Dark Room.
Today, that tedious and lengthy process is fully digital. It can be accomplished within seconds using gadgets as simple as camera phones to capture, edit and file newsworthy photographs.
In fact, it is the advancement of such user friendly technologies that have catapulted the world into the era of citizen journalism where news from ordinary citizens, rather than journalists, are also breaking
news stories on platforms like blogs and social media.
This means a young person eyeing journalism as a career needs to have an idea on how to use the gadgets, make communication to happen  in real time.
The importance of technology has become so critical in nearly all professions that most companies placing job advertisements require job applicants to be computer literate.
How then can technology be said to be destructive to young people when life itself is revolving around technological advancement?
Rhodes Park School Head Teacher Henry Kwalombota cites poor socialisation of adults as the reason behind the misconception that technology is harmful to young people.
“Technology, especially Information Technology, can never be a disadvantage to us as human beings. We as a school, have improved our teaching because of IT gadgets and we meet teachers time after time to encourage all of them to use IT equipment because it prevents a lot of pollution which was the daily experience of teaching and learning in the past,” he said.
Mr Kwalombota said in future when all required gadgets are put in place at the school and locked to avoid abuse or pilferage of examinations, his preference is that IT be used to conduct examinations especially from Grade Seven going upwards.
This view could be of interest to the Ministry of Education and the Examination Council of Zambia (ECZ) which grapple with examination malpractices year in and year out.
Mr Kwalombota whose school ranks among the oldest private schools in the country, said IT based examinations are quicker and results can be obtained within a relatively short time.
“You don’t have to wait. Within ten minutes you have your results,” he said. Mr Kwalombota said going by the benefits that both pupils and teachers at Rhodes Park derive from technology, he does not understand why anyone could think that technology is a negation to life, or that,  it spoils children.
He said pitfalls attributed to technology come about because of weaknesses amongst adults. He is of the view that society should be re-oriented to appreciate technology so that it is built within systems like education where it can be taught in schools.
He said as a country, Zambia has not appreciated that all technological gadgets are to be used appreciatively according to age prescriptions.
He said the problem is that even very young children, who do not have money of their own, are exposed to cell phones.
“We as adults are to blame. We are the abusers, not the gadgets or the children. I will give an example of cars. There are adults right now who have fallen short of expectations. They give cars to underage children to drive.
“It’s not the problem of the children. It is the orientation of adults, so if we can re-orient ourselves with IT equipment, we start afresh and become very hard on ourselves, we’ll all benefit from the advantages of using technology especially IT,  because it is applied in almost every machine that we use. How can someone stand up and say technology is a disadvantage or perhaps a spoiler of children?” he asked.
He said adults should ask themselves whether they have learnt to appreciate technology correctly and have put preventive measures in place to deter abuse.
“For us as a school, we have an examination that is taken by children from Grade Six going upwards. It is called the International Computer Driving Licence. It is one example of those examinations I mentioned earlier on where the child will write an examination and get results in five or ten minutes. Just after logging in, you get the results.
“Our Grade Eight and Nine children write computer studies examinations; and in the past, our Grade 12 pupils from outside the school used to write computer studies examinations because technology like IT is now a big employer worldwide,” he said.
Assimilation of computer studies in private schools has been attributed to as one of the reasons why private school pupils get better examination results compared to public schools where pupils get poor examination results than pupils from grant aided schools or community schools.
Mr Kwalombota said technologies in general and IT in particular,  has become the biggest employer in the world as is seen even from employers who want every person they employ to be IT literate.
He said it does not make sense that technology, which has become the world’s leading source of employment, can be seen as a negation to human life, a spoiler of minds or a disadvantage.
He said that kind of thinking, in his view, is a terrible misconception because people are not thinking about the profitability of technology.
“All we have to do in my thinking is to put rules in place that conform to the international law governing usability of technologies like IT, which is the biggest employer the world over and is the most profitable technology today,” he said.
If the UK, a developed country, is working towards teaching  children to embrace technology so that they compete favourably in the in the global race, how much more should a developing country like Zambia prepare the future generation to effectively compete on the global stage?
But as Mr Kwalombota said, the Zambian society, especially adults, need re-orientation on the positive aspects of technology which some people wrongly think negates human development.