Education is a basic human right. It is the key to the developing of human capabilities. In the last decade women education and development has attracted the attention of the international community. A number of conferences, seminars and workshops have been organized at international, national and local levels to issues related to women education and development. Recognizing the transforming power of information and communication technology in educational processes countries such as Canada have linked electronically over 10,000 schools for the provision of a host of on-line services (Hamelink, 1997). In fact, educators and policy makers affirmed that information and communication technologies are of paramount importance to the future of education anywhere in the world and Nigeria cannot afford to lag behind. The deployment of information and communication technologies at all levels of education – primary, secondary and tertiary institution no doubt will contribute to the meeting of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of gender parity in education.
In order to ensure thqt the potential of ICTs in education in Nigeria is realised, a number of things need to happen:
- Increasing the number of qualified teachers.
- Increasing educational opportunities through virtual and distance learning through ICTs facilities such as telephone, mobile phone, email, internet, virtual libraries.
- Promoting greater access to learning and teaching resources.
- Increasing the number of women enrolled and reducing the number of dropouts.
- Using new technologies to improve the quality of administrative activities and processes, which includes records and human resource management.
- Promoting competency- and performance–based curricula.
The article goes on to discuss how the federal government can help in spreading and deepening the use of ICTs in education, and some of the challenges of ICTs in women’s education. These include: inadequate funding, lack of ICT literacy and awareness, the lack of local content, poor infrastructure, and a lack of women involved in policymaking. The article closes with a list of practical and deliberate steps that can be taken, such as: avoiding a situation in which working with computers will be identified with abstract technical knowledge; avoiding gender bias in curriculum materials associated with ICT; creating role models through ‘peer learning’ for women and girls; and making sure that in mixed group-work, equal time is spent at the keyboard.