A summary of some of the challenges responsible for poor performance of students and the possible solution to each challenge.

Failure of students understanding concepts explained/taught by the teacher in class.

Making a student understand requires a teacher to be well prepared with examples . The teacher has to show the importance and relevance of what he/she is teaching to daily life. However, with the limited time and resources, many teachers simply rely on the traditional method of chalk and talk. This makes teaching more theoretical and only geared towards passing examinations. If we are to expect a gradual change among our learners, it has to be followed by a change in the teaching methodology. Teachers have to invest more time in reproducing learning material that is interactive. However, this may be impossible if we decide to stick to the traditional chalk and talk methodology. It's my humble appeal to all schools to see how we can integrate multimedia learning materials in the teaching/learning process. With such materials, lessons are spiced up with demonstrations, real pictures and video clips of the daily activities that are geared towards making learning more effective. These learning materials can be generated by teachers during holidays, downloaded from you-tube or acquired on market. There should be a paradigmatic shift from the traditional library to an electronic library where learners should be able to access multimedia learning materials , electronic books and electronic assessment.

Some students find it boring revising using textbooks.

Revising using textbooks or notes basically only exploits the sense of sight. Study shows that students understand better if they use as many senses as possible in learning. With Multimedia learning materials, students get a chance of using the sense of hearing which increases their retention rate.

Lack of assessment received by learners.

Many schools have a big student to teacher ratio. This makes it impossible for students to receive enough assessment in their daily activities,the would be time for assessment is also used for teaching. This leaves a student with lack of assessment from the teachers. Students do not get a chance knowing areas of their weakness because even the exercises given, many of them are not marked in time. However, with ICT its possible some of the assessment to be done electronically by a computer and in advanced applications scanned responses from learners can be marked on screen by a group of teachers at remote at any time and from anywhere.

Lack of follow up to confirm whether the student is doing the actual reading.

Students may be given time to read/revise, However, knowing whether the actual reading/revising is taking place, is also another challenge since teachers are not going to keep monitoring what a learner is doing in the allocated time. This makes it a big challenge to understand whether poor performance of a child is due to his inability, weakness, negative attitude or lack of reading material because traditionally there is no system that can track the time a student spends when reading and what he/she is reading. With an electronic library in place its is possible to track the time a learner devotes to all the work he/she does with aid of an appropriate software.

Teaching as a profession becomes monotonous as a teacher keeps on teaching the same things year in year out.

With time the teaching job becomes boring, its only robots that can keep doing the same task year in and year out without getting bored. This may be worsened by the poor remunerations which have made many teachers lose hope of living a life they admire. Many teachers cannot afford paying school fees for their children in the schools they teach, this greatly demotivates them and affects their performance, In order to supplement on their incomes teachers get involved in other businesses or teaching multiple schools, this greatly reduces their performance in the teaching activity. We highly believe with ICT a small group of teachers if well remunerated, can organise reading/teaching materials, exercises, examination papers, schemes of work that can be used by the whole schools in the country. With virtual platforms at schools, teachers should be able to interact with their learners even when they are away from school. In order to solve the above challenges AVEC would like to put in place , An electronic learning centre (Library). The Library is to be equipped with computers with an appropriate software that would support learners to get access to multimedia learning materials and electronic assessment . A platform for onscreen marking/ assessment to enable teachers mark scanned exercises/examinations submitted by learners from anywhere and at anytime. In brief the application should be able to do the following among others 1. Allow a student to create an account using a browser. The account should capture all the details of the student and other relevant information. 2. Allow a student to play multimedia learning materials the moment he/she is logged into his account. 3.Be able to track the time/and lessons a learner has studied in order to give a time study report. 4. Have a provision of opening up e-books to enable a student to get access to electronic books, exercises and examinations papers and give a report of time spent reading e-books and the chapters revised. 5 Have a provision for a learner to submit in scanned copies of handwritten responses such that they can be marked onscreen.(Assessing Structured questions) 6. Able to generate report for students and give instant feed back to share-holders. 7. Have a provision for administrators /teachers to mark students' work from anywhere using any device that can connect to internet. 9. The program should be able to support the Conveyor Belt System(CBS) in carrying out on-screen marking (Splitting questions done by a particular learner to enable students' work be marked by several teachers remotely.) 10. Have a provision where learners can get access to trial questions submitted by administrators. 11. The application should have a provision for a learner to answer multiple choice questions and receive instant feedback. 12. Disseminate information to teachers which may include all relevant teaching materials, examination papers, schemes of work, marking guides and any information deemed relevant. 13.Generate examination papers fit for summative evaluation. All the above is impossible if a school lacks the ICT infrastructure. AVEC is heading a project of setting up a demo of an electronic library in Masaka town to assist students from all neighboring schools who may be lacking resources. AVEC intends to help schools in setting up Electronic Learning Centres by providing them with the necessary hardware , software , electronic books and multimedia learning materials to enable them integrate ICT in their Libraries and in their teaching as a whole. AVEC, would like to be a one stop ICT hub for all ICT equipments among which would include, laptops, server computers, min computers,thin clients, monitors, mouse, key boards, network switches, routers, modems, Power cables, VGA cables, LAN cables, RJ45 connectors, network cards, scanners, printers, photocopiers, riso graphs, stencils, toners. hard disks and other related computer accessories. The Centre would also like to give after-sale services among which would include,computer networking and maintenance