Teachers to transform education through coding and digital literacy
Dreamoval Foundation, a nongovernmental organisation, has launched the Africa Code Week, which seeks to train teachers to enable them empower young people to enhance digital literacy.
The one week training programme, dubbed: Train-The-Trainer, is a SAP initiative and essential for the acceleration of digital literacy, especially for emerging markets like Ghana.
The Africa Code Week is a large-scale digital literacy initiative organized on the African Continent for children and designed to support and improve local capacity building and introduce children to Digital Literacy.
This would equip teachers with key coding skills and teaching materials to support the advancement of 21st-century skills and work to achieve the ambitions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Mr Francis Ahene-Affoh, the Country Ambassador of Africa Code Week, noted that the programme, which has been running in Ghana for three years, has seen major improvement in the education sector.
He said the 2018 edition saw the training of over 850 teachers in Accra and the Ashanti Regions and 122,100 pupils trained across the two regions.
“This year, the training is targets to impact about 1,000 teachers and 150,000 pupils, who will for the first time in their lives, experience basic coding,” he stated.
The training would run concurrently in Accra and Kumasi from the 6th -9th of August, 2019.
Mr Ahene-Affoh noted that, for the first time in the history of the coding training, there would be a special code workshop for pupils of Dzorwulu Special School, who would also be trained to develop their skills in software coding.
This is the surest way of ensuring that no one was left behind in this age of technological advancement, he added.
“The world has gone digital and Ghana cannot be left behind in this crucial era. This is why we encourage every teacher to participate in these live sessions to assist the children to write their first line of code.
Mr Ademola Ajayi, Africa Code Week Coordinator, encouraged the teachers to open up their minds for the training to enable them effectively impart the young ones.
He said the sessions were critical to Africa Code Week’s ambitions to go beyond raising awareness of the importance of teaching digital skills to building capacity for sustainable impact in partnership with schools and governments.
Mr Hamid Yakubu, the Programmes Coordinator UNESCO, commended the implementing partners for the initiative and encouraged the teachers to take the training seriously to achieve the intended purpose.
He said Information Communication Technology (ICT) was to enhance the quality of technology, thus, “coding is a new language that every child deserve to be fluent with”.
Mr Stephen Abamfo, the Accra Metro Education Director, also commended Dreamoval Foundation for the initiative adding that, this would make teachers more skillful with the introduction of the new educational curriculum.
Africa Code Week is being organized under the initiative of SAP, in partnership with DreamOval Foundation, the implementing partners in Ghana and in collaboration with UNESCO, Google, the Ministry of Education and The Ghana Education Service.
Source: GNA