By William Mbangula OSHAKATI Education and training, which do not include modern information communication technology, are meaningless. This message was delivered by Dr Vaino Nambala of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (ELCIN) during the third joint (pre- and in-service) BETD graduation ceremony of the Ongwediva College of Education held last week at the Ongwediva Trade Fair Centre where close to 500 teachers received their Basic Education Teachers Diplomas. In his keynote address on the theme “Striving to promote quality education through information communication technology”, Nambala, who stood in for Bishop Zephania Kameeta of the ELCIN, said information communication technology (ICT) should form part of the educational training in order to make all stakeholders in education conversant with new development activities in the world. Such requirements should not only be enforced when it comes to trainees from the colleges, but even those currently in the service should be computer literate. Nambala said: “It would be unfair and unrealistic for a supervisor to expect newly-graduated teachers to know how to handle the computer while the supervisor himself/herself does not know the difference between a keyboard and a mouse of the computer”. On HIV AIDS, Nambala noted that the pandemic is currently robbing the nation of valuable intellectuals who form the productive workforce. For this reason, he cautioned that education and training of teachers, which does not include adherence to a strict code of conduct, would be meaningless because it does not aim to prevent negative effects on the nation such as the spread of the deadly diseases. Speaking directly to the graduands, Nambala, a member of the Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN) Executive Committee, urged them to work hard and to be prepared to make sacrifices, to avoid extreme luxuries and greediness. At the same time, he urged them to uplift the educational standards of their respective schools. The BETD course is offered for three years on a full-time basis and four years part-time. About 289 full-time students graduated. Trainees in service were 188. They were trained in various fields and categories such as lower primary education, social sciences education, languages education, agriculture and life science education, commerce education, mathematics and integrated natural science education, mathematics education, integrated natural science education and upper primary / junior secondary education. Five distinctions were recorded by, among others, Magano Shaningwa, Festus Sheetekela and Immanuel Shihepo in mathematics education, Titus Kanana in Upper primary/junior secondary education and S.M. Nambinga in Agriculture and life science education.