The National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has commended President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the One Teacher One Laptop initiative.
Speaking at the the 6th Quadrennial National Delegates Conference of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) in Kumasi on Tuesday January 4, the National President of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Mrs Philippa Larsen, said “Your excellency, I wish to commend you and your government for supplying customized laptops to teachers.
“We are grateful and wish to take this opportunity to remind the Minister of Education of other related issues that we had lengthy discussions on. We believe this is going to be done to ensure peace and tranquility on the educational front.”
President Akufo-Addo pledged to address the issue about concerns raised by teachers over the ‘One Teacher, One Laptop’ initiative.
The One Teacher One Laptop initiate was launched by Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.
During the launch, he handed over 350,000 laptops in fulfilment of government’s pledge to equip Ghana’s teachers with the requisite ICT skills to prepare the next generation for the Fourth Industrial revolution.
At a brief but colourful ceremony at the campus of the St Mary’s Senior High School, Accra on Friday 3rd September, 2021 Dr Bawumia, assisted by the Minister for Education, Hon Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum; the Director General of the Ghana Education Service, Prof Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa; and the leadership of Teacher Unions, handed over the first of these laptops, known as the TM1 (Teachers Mate 1) to the 71 teachers of the school.
“Effective teaching and learning is critical to developing the human capacity for work, innovation and creativity; necessary ingredients for capacity building. Teachers are the indispensable pillars to this necessary capacity building. This initiative, in collaboration with the Teacher Unions, is to support the vision of the Ghana Education Service of creating an enabling environment to facilitate effective teaching and learning” Dr Bawumia stated.
Under the initiative, Government is to provide every teacher in Ghana, from Kindergarten to the Senior High School level, with a laptop preloaded with educational materials and with access to an E-Library equipped with books recommended by the GES on the various subjects.
The materials can be accessed whether online or offline, and with free Wi-Fi available in 722 Senior High Schools across the country, access to the almost innumerable resources available on the internet is expected to aid research, teaching and learning.
The State takes up 70% of the cost of the laptop, while the teacher makes up the difference. The laptop, however, becomes the personal property of the teacher and serves the benefit of providing a tool for developing the teacher’s professional and personal capacity.
This shift to ICT-based teaching and learning has many benefits for both teachers and students, according to experts in education. With the curriculum materials already installed onto the laptops, the suggested lesson notes prepared by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) can be downloaded onto the laptops and used to end the burdensome task of writing lesson notes into notebooks.
This would perfectly be in tandem with the fifth skill and competence under the new standards-based curriculum, the promotion of digital literacy.
The laptops would also help in the field of assessment. The filling of School-Based Assessment, report cards, cumulative records, and the building of learners’ individual portfolios would become easier if each teacher owns a laptop.
Source: Laud Nartey|3news.com
