Zambia:guidelines to regulate the use of technology among learners

Lusaka Zambia

IT is critical to discover the role technology plays in fostering fantasies -acting out behaviours- and unsafe practices that savagely distort the social moral thread in the wake of information communication and technology (ICT) misapplication.

As technology permeates the corridors of schools, there is need to know better who is at risk with ICT, what prevention and how treatment strategies work best.
Technology application in schools -in all its rigid sense- has been at the same work for ages considering that every learner is the maker of his or her future.

In contemporary Zambia, education has produced a vast population that was able to apply ICT but unable to distinguish what was worth benefits of the technological advancement.
The trouble with young people is not that they do not know but that they know so much that is not worthy. With the advent of technology in schools, Zambia needs a thorough and complete education system which fits the learner to perform justly, skillfully towards igniting development using ICT.

In his response to ICT application in schools and its potential to overwhelmingly corrupt the end-users, Minister of Education John Phiri calls for new guidelines to regulate the use of technology among learners in schools.

Dr Phiri disclosed in an interview that the power of information technology and communication (ICT) has the potential to benefit the welfare of learners and also could work as a weapon to destroy the morals of the technology users.

The minister regrets that there are no clear guidelines on the use of technology in schools, contending that technology application in schools could be beneficial as it avails a lot of advantages to the users.
Dr Phiri observes: "We need new guidelines to regulate the use of technology in schools and the Ministry of Education (MoE) needs to sit down with other stakeholders to address the issue. Technology can be beneficial and at the same time could be like any other weapon to corrupt the morals of the users. It can turn against the learners."

Peace Temple Redeemed Methodist Church's Paul Bupe put it bluntly that technology application in learning institutions was severely being abused by young people and that stringent measures should be instituted urgently to address the ICT misuse in schools.

Times of Zambia