Meyram sits with her friends in the bustling e-learning lab in Semera Girls’ Boarding School. Outside the morning temperature is reaching 40 degrees, but inside the lab the air is cooled by fans and air conditioning. To protect the computers from dust all the students leave their shoes outside.
The lab is part of a project in which Camara Education Ethiopia has been collaborating with British Council Ethiopia. Computers were funded by the Ethiopian Ministry of Education, while Camara Education supplied the hardware, networking and technical support, and the British Council provided educational resources.
“I started using the computers one month ago”. Meyram explained. “It’s difficult to get hard copies of books so the computers make it easy to find the relevant content. The teachers have the real books, but we don’t.”
Not only has the e-learning lab provided students with textbooks, but it also helps understanding. Meyram finds that “the videos on the computers help me a lot.” If she doesn’t understand something her teacher is trying to explain, she can come to the lab after class and learn more.
Meyram uses the lab every day for an hour or so. Her ICT teacher is always there to help (she was trained by Camara Education). Meyram feels “excited to learn new things so I listen carefully to my e-learning lab teacher. I am proud of what I have learnt so far.”
As an ICT club member Meyram has the responsibility to show her friends how to use the computers. “I feel well trained and this makes me happy to share my knowledge and teach my friends”, she explained. Next she aims to teach her family too. Though she lives in the boarding school, every time she talks to her family she tells them about her e-learning, “My family know I am learning how to use computers and they are proud of me. In the future I want to share my knowledge with them too.”
Meyram has high ambitions for her future and uses e-learning to help her journey towards achieving them. “Using these computers, especially experimenting on Wikipedia, helps me to know more about the outside world and I am exploring more. This helps me get different information about other countries.“
“Because, when I grow up, I want to be the prime minister of Ethiopia.”
The interview with Meyram was conducted in Amharic and has been translated into English.