Fijai(W/R), August 20, GNA – The General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) Mr Thomas Musah has asked teachers to imbibe the skills of modern technology in education to reduce the human interface in the classroom amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to him, “a day is coming when a teacher can be in the house and teach” as manual teaching will give way to Information, Communication Technology (ICT) education in the next decade.
“Online teaching and learning will soon be launched in Ghana to safeguard the human contact in teaching and learning”.
Mr Musah was speaking at the closing session of a three-day capacity-building workshop on Emergency Remote Teaching Techniques and ICT Essentials Training for selected Teachers from various Districts of the Western Region.
“The UNESCO ICT Transforming Education in Africa is a project developed under the UNESCO-Korea Funds-in-Trust (KFIT) framework, supports a selected number of Sub-Saharan African countries to test scalable and effective modules of using ICT as a catalyst for institutional and systemic transformations to contribute to achieving goals and targets of Sustainable Development Goal 4(SDG 4) in the beneficiary countries including Ghana”.
Phase one of the project which ran from 2016 to 2019, focused on Mozambique, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe with La Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, and Senegal being selected for phase two.
The project seeks to improve upon learning outcomes and acquisition of 21st-century skills such as digital literacy, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity, and innovation through the appropriate use of ICT by educators in Ghana.
The project is being implemented by UNESCO in partnership with GNAT, Ghana Education Service, and the Centre for National Distance Learning and Open Schooling (CENDLOS) through the Korean government support to 51 Junior and Senior High School teachers to acquire digital skills in remote teaching to prepare them for future shocks and disruptions to teaching and learning.
Mr Musah said Ghana’s system of education needed a curriculum, content, and pedagogy infused with ICT stressing that “about 56% of the human capital will go waste in the next decade if ICT was not embraced”.
He said recent happenings around the globe positioned education in an emergency need adding that, “education cannot wait in the era of COVID-19 pandemic” hence the need for civil society organizations, NGOs to partner the government to invest heavily in ICT education.
The Head of Office and UNESCO Representative in Ghana, Mr Adourahamane Diallo in a virtual message, stressed the need to equip teachers with ICT skills and challenged them to make ICT education workable in schools.
He said UNESCO would continue to partner the ICT training of teachers to impact positively on their learners.
Mr Diallo said UNESCO would monitor the schools for feedback from the teachers.
The Director for CENDLOS, Mr Gyamfi Adwabour also in a virtual address, admitted that Ghana was fast gaining ground in ICT education as teachers were embracing ICT in teaching and learning.
He noted that in a COVID-19 pandemic era, ICT, online teaching was vital and pledged his outfit commitment to continue to support and empower ICT in education.
Mr Adwabour said ICT in education was now inseparable and stressed the need to support the paradigm shift like other counties.
Participants were taken through Microsoft Word, Presentation software, Email for teaching, and the use of Learning Management Systems focusing on Module.
GNA