ASHANTI HEADS OF SCHOOLS TO DISCUSS ELETRONIC LEARNING (Spread)

Story: Kwame Asare Boadu, Kumasi

THE Head of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) at the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports, Reverend Emmanuel Dadebo, has disputed claims that standards of education in the country have fallen.
He said the volume of knowledge that education had produced in the Ghanaian society in the last five years was heavier than that of the previous 30 years and, therefore, it would be untenable for anyone to argue that standards had gone down.
Rev Dadebo stated this at the 2008 Ashanti Region Heads of Schools Summit in Kumasi organised by e-toys & more, a company that deals in children’s educational materials and skills development.
The summit, which attracted about 500 heads of schools or their representatives, was on the theme, “Transforming Schools Through Electronic Learning”, and it was used to discuss the importance of electronic learning in educational development.
Rev Dadebo said the process of education had changed, adding that critics must appreciate that to know the level of educational development.
“What we learnt in sixth form years ago is now introduced in class three, though in a different form and standard,” he said, and asked if that was not an improvement over the past.
Rev Dadebo pointed out that the era when students had to sit down to read volumes of pages of books was gone, with electronic learning becoming the order of the day.
The ICT head mentioned the many activities conducted outside the classroom in public schools as one of the major reasons for the discouraging performance by students of public schools, as against that of their counterparts in private schools.
He spoke against the situation where some schools sought outside support for computers, only to dump them because they could not set up electronic learning centres in the schools, and called on such schools to take advantage of the opportunities provided by e-toys & more for the establishment of such centres.
He stated that technology was not an end in itself but a means to achieving educational objectives.
The Executive Vice-President of e-toys & more, Mrs Theresa Sackey, called on school authorities to take advantage of the third international conference on ICT development, education and training, also known as E-learning Africa, which would take place in Ghana this year.
She observed that the conference would be one of Africa’s best learning events for developing electronic learning capacitors in Africa.
Mrs Sackey said e-toys more continued to upgrade its e-learning centres with powerful educational software, broad band Internet facilities, as well as e-schools administrator for effective school management.
The Ashanti Regional Inspector of Schools, Nana Kwaku Asiedu, noted the global march of ICT education and said that was why the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service had introduced ICT in the educational syllabus.
He was delighted that e-toys & more had geared its activities towards adding value to schools.