The morning sun cast a golden hue over the Nakawa ICT Innovation Hub in Kampala on 30th September , 2025, as the air filled with the comforting scent of catering and refreshments like Complimentary snacks and refreshments made available throughout the event, even local/Ugandan food such as matooke,rice gnuts, chicken, meat, potatoes extra were provided for lunch to keep teachers and evry one strong and focused.
Teachers from across Uganda gathered for Digital Leadership Roundtable & Showcase Event.
The event for a day of thought-provoking discussions and innovative showcases as they explore the latest trends and best practices in digital leadership which brought together industry experts, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders who shared their insights on how to harness technology for success. Their faces glowing with anticipation as they shared breakfast and later savored a hearty lunch, Laughter and earnest conversations filled the Innovation Hub as educators presented innovative ideas like the offline digital libraries built with tools like Kolibri, creative ways to weave ICT into the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), and heartfelt stories of classroom triumphs from diffrent teachers/ innovators. Sponsors mingled with teachers, exchanging contacts and ideas with the warmth of old friends reuniting, turning the hub into a living testament to UNESCO’s 2025 theme, “Recasting teaching as a collaborative profession.” This theme, rooted in the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation on the Status of Teachers, calls for a shift from solitary struggles to a profession enriched by mutual support, shared expertise, and inclusive policies.Recalling that the right to education is a fundamental human right the theme beckons us to reimagine education not as a solitary climb but as a shared journey, where policies weave threads of mutual support, peer wisdom, and collective resilience. For educators across Uganda from the bustling streets of Kampala to the resilient communities of Uganda, this recasting is a heartfelt invitation to transform exhaustion into empowerment, fragmentation into fellowship.
As for the [EduTech Teachers Network (ETN)], alongside Sharebility Uganda we aim at inspiring colleagues who are ready to learn and add more techinical eye openers for the steady flow of both education and teacher collaboration net works to indicate spirit ignites every teacher gathering/ meetings or workshops. ETN, forged from Sharebility Uganda’s grassroots passion, is more than a network it’s a sanctuary where over 100 teachers, like Agnes, find solace in shared stories and solutions. Our 2025 action plan four regional workshops pulsing with ideas, a national conference brimming with breakthroughs, and membership blooming to embrace new voices aligns seamlessly with UNESCO’s vision, fostering environments where collaboration is not optional but the heartbeat of our profession.
Mr. Mukalele Rogers presented on behalf of the Edutech Teachers Network as a partner during the recent Elearner Digital Leadership and Roundtable and Showcase. Schools were encouraged to install offline digital libraries and create their own using tools like kolibri to support ICT integration in teaching and learning.
This article is, a loving tribute to World Teachers’ Day 2025, intertwines the theme with the lived realities of Ugandan classrooms, drawing from ETN’s core values of empowerment, innovation, and community. Referencing Unit 3.1 of the [Sharebility EduTech Course on Developing and Implementing School ICT Policies], which urges us to build digital cultures amid reluctant peers, and echoing Module 1.1.1’s call to brainstorm ICT’s role in enhancing teacher effectiveness, we’ll explore how collaborative policies can heal the divides of isolation. Linking to our earlier reflection on “Effective ICT Inventory Management,” where teachers like those in Lira turned chaos into harmony through joint tracking, we see collaboration as the golden thread sustaining tech’s promise. Through tender narratives like a Gulu teacher’s tearful breakthrough in co-creating trauma-sensitive digital stories we now uncover the human warmth at collaboration’s core. In sharing these, we not only celebrate Uganda’s educators but send a resonant message to UNESCO: when teachers hold hands across divides, education doesn’t just evolve it soars today we witness the Digital Leadership Roundtable not just another conference those who participated, you were able to connect with stakeholders, equipped to use technology to inspire learners, close the digital divide, and will now be able to prepare the next generation for future success. The TOOKE team was present and also presented there innovative products in this Digital Leadership Roundtable & Showcase event imagine wonderful healthy products out of bananas.
The Warm Embrace of Collaboration: Why Recasting Resonates in Uganda’s Heartbeat
UNESCO’s 2025 theme whispers a truth long felt in Uganda’s classrooms educators teaching thrives when it’s a chorus, not a solo. The UNESCO Recommendation envisioned policies that nurture professional solidarity, yet globally, teachers grapple with isolation, a shadow darkening sub-Saharan Africa’s educators according to a poignant 2023 UNESCO Institute for Statistics report . In Uganda, where secondary classes swell to 50 or more, this loneliness creeps in like evening mist a young English teacher in Entebbe, her voice fading as she crafts lesson plans by lantern light, unaware that a colleague in Masaka has woven the same poetry unit into vibrant digital storytelling, complete with Luganda audio overlays.
Collaboration recasts this fog into a sunrise of possibility, honoring the theme’s plea for shared expertise that bolsters well-being and sharpens skills. For Agnes in Jinja, it began with a hesitant post in ETN’s forum: “How do I make photosynthesis dance on screen without the tech fighting back?” The replies flooded in like a gentle rain tips from a Soroti peer on free apps for low-bandwidth simulations, encouragement from a Kampala veteran on involving students in cable management to build ownership. By week’s end, Agnes wasn’t just fixing a projector; she was co-hosting a virtual session, her laughter mingling with voices from Arua, turning vulnerability into victory. This emotional alchemy where frustration yields to fellowship mirrors research showing collaborative networks cut burnout among African teachers , allowing them to pour more heart into the CBC’s demand for personalized, tech-infused learning.
Uganda’s [National ICT in Education Strategy 2020-2025] dreams of collaborative governance, but with few schools holding formal ICT policies, the dream often wilts in implementation’s heat. Enter Unit 3.1 of the Sharebility EduTech Course, a gentle guide through the wilderness, prompting reflections like, “Have you noticed schools with cyber labs yet teachers cling to chalkboards?” It humanizes policy as a bridge, not a barrier, urging us to cultivate digital cultures where reluctant innovators, like Agnes’s once-skeptical colleague and many other educators seen on that day, bloom through peer nudges Weaving Policies with Heart Collaborative Frameworks that bind us.
Recasting teaching collaboratively demands policies born of dialogue, not decree—living documents shaped by the hands that wield chalk and code. ICT policies as lifelines, guiding use to enhance school processes while benefiting all through responsible integration, much like a village elder sharing wisdom around a fire. In Wakiso’s sun-baked courtyards, a circle of teachers, their uniforms dusted from the day’s play, gathered under a mango tree to adapt Sharebility’s sample policy .
These policies pulse with humanity, addressing the theme’s call for mutual respect. The sample’s preliminary section, citing alignment with national strategies, becomes a canvas for stories objectives like “institutionalizing structured ICT integration” morph into commitments to co-train on tools from Module 1.1.1, where brainstorming ICT’s forms turns abstract concepts into tangible joys, like a Fort Portal teacher’s first virtual field trip to Lake Victoria, co-planned with a peer from Entebbe. “It felt like holding hands across miles,” she confides, her voice thick with the thrill of students’ wide-eyed wonder at digital waves lapping shores they’d only read about.
If policies are the loom, ETN is the warm thread weaving them into daily life, a network where collaboration feels like coming home after a long rain. Our motto, “Transforming Education, One Click at a Time,” pulses with the theme’s collaborative soul, our 2025 plan a roadmap of connection: workshops where hands clasp over keyboards, conferences where stories spill like Nile waters. In Central Region, teachers dive into [Google Workspace] co-teaching, their screens alive with co-edited CBC units English lessons blending Shakespeare with Luganda proverbs, voices overlapping in delighted discovery.These networks cradle the human spirit, easing the quiet aches of teaching. isolation’s grip, the 60% shadow over African teachers yielding to light .
Extending beyond screens, ETN infuses moral warmth, joint digital citizenship drives countering online shadows with light. In Western folds, mentorship circles, drawing from Module 2.1.1’s digital pedagogy foundations from sharebility Uganda, blend with, teachers co-designing hybrid havens where content, craft, and tech dance in balance. “It’s like breathing together,” one reflects, her voice laced with the quiet joy of burdens lightened.
These teachings, etched with compassion, embrace all novices’ stumbles met with veterans’ steady hands, urban haste tempered by rural rhythms. In recasting thus, we fulfill UNESCO’s embrace, Uganda’s classrooms blooming as gardens of grace.
Closing Reflections
As World Teachers’ Day 2025 dawns, UNESCO’s theme wraps around us like a shared shawl, warming the weary hearts of Uganda’s educators. ETN’s networks and Sharebility’s gentle guidance remind us: collaboration is the quiet revolution that turns solitary sparks into enduring flames. Policies co-whispered, lessons co-kindled, joys co-celebrated these are the gifts we offer our children, a legacy of light. To every teacher, in every corner of our beautiful land: your voice is the harmony we crave. Together, hand in hand, click by heartfelt click, we recast not just teaching, but for a better tomorrow. Join us appreciate eLearner Uganda and all the the support providers from key partners who managed to plan and schedule such a wonderful Educative event which happened on Tuesday, 30th September 2025 at the National ICT Innovation Hub, Nakawa, Kampala.we as Sharebility and Edutech Teachers Network team are Greatful.
Happy World Teachers’ Day may your collaborations echo eternally.
Leave a Reply