MTN Foundation has engaged Nigerian educators in a 12-week digital training session that focuses on how to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) tools and skills into daily classroom deliv
MTN Foundation has engaged Nigerian educators in a 12-week digital training session that focuses on how to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) tools and skills into daily classroom delivery and administration.
The programme, now in its 10th week, is a collaboration between the MTN Foundation, Senator Abiru Innovation Lab (SAIL) and Co-Creation Hub, a leading Nigerian edutech platform.
The programme’s central goal is to improve teaching and learning and equip Nigerian educators with 21st-century digital and AI skills. It also focuses on helping teachers and professors, school administrators, school counsellors, young instructors, education assistants and tutors understand a variety of skills in the world of learning.
MTN Foundation SAIL Programme Particular attention during the 10th week is a session facilitated by Oluwatobi Olayanju, a data scientist and business analyst at Data Science Nigeria. During the virtual training session, the expert focused on AI literacy, responsible technology use and how to integrate the tools into class delivery.
Olayanju shared with participants several AI tools available to educators, which are believed to polish their skills and enable new teaching methods of imparting knowledge to young Nigerians.
Such tools mentioned by the expert include chatbots for lesson planning, visual design platforms, text-to-video and text-to-audio converters, and assessment generators for structured drilling of students.
Olayanju also introduced ditchthattextbook.com to participants, which he described as “a centralised repository that aggregates these essential resources.” He added that the resource helps educators discover and apply modern digital tools in their practice.
“Educators can leverage these tools for visual design, lesson planning, and content creation. The capabilities extend to advanced multimedia integration, such as converting text to video or audio and generating podcasts with tools like NotebookLM,” he said during the training.
Nigerian teacher providing differentiated instruction with AI tools to students Another key part of the MTN Foundation-led programme engaged participants in interactive quiz components via quiz.com by testing what they’ve learnt throughout the programme’s 10 weeks. Feedback revealed how the programme has impacted educators in terms of productivity tools, student assessment designs and AI-assisted lesson planning.
Joy Medupin, a representative of Co-Creation Hub who is on the programme management team, described the programme as remarkable and on course to produce a cohort of educators informed about equipping AI into classroom teaching and learning.
The MTN Foundation’s SAIL programme, with 10 weeks gone, still has two more weeks before a final project phase.
Also Read: MTN Foundation calls for collaboration as over 360,000 Enugu youths engage in drug abuse.
The MTN Foundation’s SAIL AI program: Saving out-of-school childrenThe program comes at a time when the Nigerian education system is characterised by cracks such as out-of-school children.
Data by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) showed that Nigeria has more than 10.2 million out-of-school children, the highest number in the world. In fact, the addition of secondary-age adolescents drives the number to nearly 20 million, making Nigeria one of the top three countries with youth exclusion from education.
However, experts have often noted that creating programs that upskill teachers and educators in the Nigerian education system should be a top priority. And the MTN Foundation collaborative project seeks to dance to that tune.
Nigerian students Aside from the focus on out-of-school children, data has shown that gaps exist in Nigerian teachers’ digital skills acquisition. A 2002 survey by the Brookings Institution found that fewer than 30% of sub-Saharan African teachers had received any form of digital skills training.
The MTN Foundation’s SAIL programme wants to address this gap and align with Nigeria’s National Policy on Education (NPE) that tasks teachers with being facilitators of modern learning.
