By Fredrick Okopie

CITY of Knowledge Academy, CKA, Ore-Sagamu, Ogun State has reiterated its commitment to prepare pupils for the 21st century jobs through adequate ICT driven skills.

The Head of School, Abiola Lamikanra who spoke during a press conference to unveil the maiden annual   ICT competition that starts today, aid the primary objective of the contest among the pupils in primary schools was to catch them young in the knowledge of Information Communications Technology.

According to her, since CKA is more or less a paperless community, sharing the knowledge of ICT with other schools would be part of the school’s corporate social responsibility.

While explaining what led to the ICT competition, Lamikanra said: “Since we are a 21st century school, we wanted to make sure that all technological aids to education are in use.

The very first thing we did when we started CKA in 2013 was to ensure that all our children have their own networks. We have a very good internet access and our classrooms are well equipped with interactive boards.

“I can assure you that the teachers in our school use them extensively to bring the world into the classrooms. When I say the world, I mean they can click on any website, videos and teach whatever needs to be shown to the students in real life right in the class.

“It means we  pride ourselves to be an almost paperless community because our network is used by everyone in the school in almost everything. Therefore, we said, what can we do to also influence the knowledge of ICT in primary schools, noting that more than 60 per cent of our children are already Microsoft certified.”

Meanwhile, speaking on the contest of today, the Vice Principal, Academics, Mr. Emmanuel Kolapo said that the curriculum had been given to contesting schools, adding that hopefully, the curriculum will encourage their teachers prepare students for the contest.

He said: “We are believing that the curriculum will encourage them to explore greater depth of teaching in ICT and Thursday (today) the children will come in for the contest.”

According to him, there will be a practical examination and quiz where beautiful prizes would be won.

He said: “What we have decided to do is in two parts. We want them to be able to do a practical test to ascertain what they can do on the computer. So, each school is to send three representatives for the contest, one of them will represent them for the practical test, while the other two will collaborate with the one represented in the quiz.”

Since its a 21st century issue, Kolapo noted that some of the things contestants are expected to do is ability to communicate, collaborate, create and be critical in thinking. Those four Cs, he pointed out, are the four core skills of the 21st century.