Isa Kaita College of Education, Dutsinma, in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, Kano Field Office, will train no fewer than 20,000 youths on Artificial Intelligence, AI.
UNICEF’s Focal Person at the college, Malam Halilu Ahmed, disclosed this in Katsina, yesterday, at a training for 700 lecturers, teachers and facilitators on the adoption of AI in learning and teaching.
According to Ahmed, the aim of the training is for lecturers, teachers and facilitators to be equipped and step it down to their students across various schools in the state.
He explained that already, they have trained some coordinators that will carry out the training for youths, including out-of-school children.
“There are 10 technical people who were also trained in Kano on this programme, to oversee the training for youths across various centres,” he said.
According to him, each of the trained lecturers and teachers is expected to train no fewer than 40 participants and monitor them, so that at the end, they would get a certificate.
Malam Isma’il Bello, one of the facilitators, and a technical member on generative artificial intelligence state team, said the training was important.
“You know, there is the development of artificial intelligence, and people are actually taking advantage of it to do things.
“These courses were mounted to ensure that people get to use AI in the right way, especially the young ones. This is the right time to give them the knowledge, so that they don’t misuse it.
“If we allow our society to use the technology without being guided, we are actually going to face trouble in the future,” Bello said.
He added that about 200 lecturers from tertiary institutions were trained and now they had trained 300 teachers from secondary schools.
Bello noted that there are other trainees currently receiving training in some CBT centres, to handle out-of-school children.
“The number we are training is actually going to be somewhere around 700 all together, who are also expected to train about 20,000 youths.
“There are three courses that every participant in the training is expected to take, especially generative AI foundation, generative AI medium and then generative AI master.
“Each of these trainees, after successfully completing a training, will earn a certificate, which is recognised worldwide by Microsoft Corporation, and it is issued by the Federal Ministry of Education.”
One of the participants, Malam Ibrahim Jabir, a Guardian and Counseling Master at GGSS Tsagero, said he had learnt a lot from the training, which he did not know before now.
“Now I am familiar with them. Honestly, I think it has been very helpful. We hope to integrate what we learnt here in our various schools.
“It is going to simplify things for us and make things different, especially from the lesson plan, the way we administer our lessons and the way we handle our students; this time, it is going to be different.” NAN
