From August 2nd to 7th, 2015, the DreamOval Foundation in partnership with the Ghana National Association of Teachers held iTeach 2015 on Ashesi’s campus. Now in its sixth year, the training workshop equips teachers with free basic ICT skills to enhance their work in the classrooms.
Since its inception iTeach has trained teachers from the Greater Accra, Northern, Ashanti, Easter and Central regions. This year’s workshop was organized for teachers in Ghana’s Western Region.
During the week-long program, staff from DreamOval led sessions on using the Internet, Microsoft Office tools, using social media and blogging. The teachers were also taken through a session on etiquette for teachers and how to provide counseling to their students.
“Some of the teachers have talked about how they will pass the knowledge on to their students,” said Nelson Nii Louis, Project Engineer at DreamOval. “They will also be able to teach their colleagues how to do continuous assessments using Excel, prepare lesson notes and collaborate with one another using technology.”
The workshop also provided opportunities for the teachers from various parts of the Western Region to interact with one another and exchange teaching ideas and methods. Teacher Abraham Mensah from the Rev. Monsignor Junior High School, Takoradi remarked, “Previously we used to teach in a manual way. For this week, we have been able to add innovation to our teaching through ICT.”
In a closing ceremony, CEO of DreamOval and Ashesi alumnus, Derrydean Dadzie, encouraged the teachers to use the skills they had acquired to change their communities, “We are doing this for global transformation,” he said. “You have to go out there and do it.”
The iTeach programme is part of DreamOval’s work to help improve education across Ghana, and was started in 2010. Since inception, the programme has covered six regions of Ghana, and has trained some 500 teachers.