Government
has begun a nationwide Information and Communication Technology (ICT) training
for 50,000 teachers across the country. The project aims at improving the
teachers' knowledge base on ICT. They are also expected to pass on the
knowledge acquired from the training to their pupils.
To this end, Rlg Institute of Technology, a
subsidiary of Rlg Communications, had been contracted by government to train
the teachers in the nationwide project. The leading Ghanaian ICT firm will also
provide the teachers with laptops for the first phase of the project.
Launching the project in Accra, Ghana's President
John Dramani Mahama said: "it is necessary to train yourself in computer
and ICT both to make your work easier and also to be able to help your students
in terms of the use of computer and ICT."
He continued: "Nowadays the all professional as
well as teacher can use the computer for a lot of things including the
preparation of lesson notes and others". Mr. Mahama, therefore, appealed
to the teachers to make good use of the opportunity offered by government.
The President also used the opportunity to launch
another project aims at distributing 4,000 laptops to 152 basic schools in the
Greater Accra Region in which each school was entitled to 24 laptops.
According to him, the government was working to
ensure that in the near future, projectors would replace blackboards in our
classrooms. He added that government would endeavour to distribute 400,000
laptops to teachers across the country in the next four years.
He also revealed that government would initiate a
project aimed at building 20,000 apartments for teachers across the country as
well as build 200 Senior High Schools (SHS) in communities, which did not have
SHS within the next four years.
The Chief Executive Officer of Rlg Communications, Mr.
Roland Agambire noted that the training for teachers would be done in batches,
involving 1, 250 teachers per week, who would undergo an intensive training for
a period of five days.
He said "We have placed and resourced our 62
training centres across the country in readiness for this project and have
engaged a team of knowledgeable ICT experts on Microsoft Software to conduct
the training".
According to him, each teacher will be given a set
of training materials as well as a certificate upon completion of the training
course. Mr. Agambire was delighted to say that the investments and the
interventions made by the government and the Rlg would turn the education
sector around in no distant future.
The Minister of Education, Ambassador Lee Ocran
added that the government had also contracted Zepto and Omatek, which are only
into the production of computers in the country to assist Rlg in the
manufacturing and distribution of the laptops to the schools and teachers
across the country.
He disclosed that the government had initiated a
project aimed at rehabilitating all the science resource centres across the
country at the cost of 81 million Euros. The Accra Metro Coordinator for
Science and ICT Education, Madam Vivian Adjo Tetteh, on behalf of the
beneficiary teachers thanked the government and Rlg for the package.
The Chronicles