KMA BEGINS ICT TRAINING PROGRAMME (PAE 30, MARCH 9, 2010)

THE Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), in conjunction with the Ghana Education Service (GES) has begun a training of trainers programme for teachers in Information Communications Technology (ICT) in Israel.
The first batch of 10 teachers has completed the training and returned home to help train others as a way of deepening teaching and learning of ICT in schools within the metropolis.
Mr Samuel Sarpong, the Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), who was speaking at a media briefing in connection with the World Read Aloud Day celebration in Kumasi, said the KMA and the Israeli Government financed the programme jointly, with the assembly, committing about $7,000 to it.
The day was a global event created to promote community bonding through the easy exercise of reading aloud together on a regular basis.
Mr Sarpong said the Assembly and its partners were about to sponsor another batch of teachers for the training.
He expressed hope that the beneficiaries of the training programme would undertake the task ahead of them with all seriousness since ICT was the order of the day.
Mr Sarpong emphasised that the read aloud day could encourage families to read aloud to their children as a way of cultivating the habit of reading in the young ones.
He stated that research had shown that families played an important role in the reading habits of children.
“By reading aloud with your children and encouraging them to read on their own, you are helping them become better readers, listeners and students.
“You are also helping them build vocabulary and language skills and helping them gain knowledge about the world around them,” he said.
Mr Sarpong underlined the commitment of the assembly to promote education.
“This informed the assembly’s decision to demolish unauthorised structures at the Osei Kyeretwie Senior High School where about 70 per cent of the school’s lands had been taken over encroachers,” he said.
Mr Sarpong served notice to people encroaching on other school lands in the metropolis to rethink before the law caught up with them.