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NEPAD equips young African with ICT Skills | 20 December 2010 |
The NEPAD e-Schools initiative has made some real inroads into the daily-lived experiences of many Africans students. The Wa Senior High School in Ghana, like other schools in 16 African countries* are the beneficiaries of the NEPAD e-Schools Initiative that aims to equip young African with the 21st century skills, by using Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) as a tool that can help to improve education and/or even reduce poverty. In Northern rural Ghana, the Wa Senior High School students can now say:’’ once upon a time with the arrival of NEPAD and…Technology’’. This is their story.
Wa Senior High School has been in existence for over four decades. Most of the students come from the nearby villages where they accompany their schooling with farming, cattle rearing, charcoal burning and selling. The teachers at the School have until recently relied on the traditional teaching and learning aids such as the ‘chalk and talk’ method and textbooks – in a context where scarce resources have to be stretched to accommodate and feed the increasing number of students. The 2004 arrival of the NEPAD e-Schools Initiative has brought to Wa Senior High School - and by extension to northern Ghana - a well equipped ICT centre installed by CISCO with 20 client servers, a main server, five computers and a smart board with lots of software ranging from Learn, Learnthings, Didier, Learn@yourownpace all of which are aimed at enhancing ICT integration into the school’s activities. The centre is being used by the students from our High School as well as students from over 150 other high schools in northern Ghana. This is a major development especially one bears in mind that our school did not have a single computer let alone access to the internet and/or e-learning facilities unti the arrival of the e-Schools project. Based on the experiences attained through the NEPAD e-Schools initiative, in 2009, Wa Senior High School entered into the 2009 Microsoft Innovative/Pathfinder School Contest. The High School performed well and it was then selected to become one of the Microsoft Pathfinder Schools in the world. Being the only Pathfinder school in Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa, the students and teachers at Wa Senior High School agreed to proactively share their experiences and knowledge – including experiences gained from the 2009 World Wide Education Forum in Brazil – with other schools, teachers and educational workers in Ghana. Outside of the work being done by the NEPAD Agency, one of the main supporters of our e-schools project includes the ‘Microsoft Partners in Learning’ initiative which has provided various facilities and software towards Wa Senior High School. This support has also been extended towards networking forums, seminars and exchanges with students and teachers from other schools across the continent. As a result we have managed to score successes in some of the following areas: · Creating e-communities that are dedicated to innovative teaching and learning and professional development; · Finding new content and curricula such as - peer coaching and the set-up of the ‘Innovative Schools Toolkit’;· Content creation by sharing the latest thinking, tips and tricks, lesson plans, recommended links, and much more;· The promotion of practices that school leaders and teachers can use to improve students’ 21st-century skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration, communication, contextual learning and creativity. Through the work that is being done within the context of the e-schools project Wa Senior High School is now extending its work deep into the corridors of rural Ghana with the roll-out of the Microsoft Partners in Learning initiative. Our students now move round in Ghana collaborating and introducing Microsoft Partners in Learning (PiL) Programs to schools as well as launching PiL Clubs across the country. We can now proudly say ‘Once upon a time, before technology arrived at Wa Senior High School, our School was fondly referred to as a ‘sports college’, but with the arrival of ICTs, Wa Senior High School is now a ‘Pathfinder school’ in Ghana a ‘centre of excellence’, an example of the local successes of NEPAD and a reference for the study of technology in Ghana. We now see our problems and challenges as opportunities and we are going to strive even harder in order to succeed. The NEPAD e-Schools initiative it’s a priority continental project of the Africa Regional Action Plan for the Knowledge Economy (ARAKPE). The initiative is driven by the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency through its e-Africa Programme, previously known as NEPAD e-Africa Commission. The Initiative is present in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda and Congo Brazzaville. For more information on the NEPAD e-Schools Initiative contact:Towela Nyirenda Jere. PhDTel: +27 (0) 12 841 4347Email: towelan@nepad.org
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