IICD supported project: Global Teenager Ghana

Countries: Ghana [GH]
Sectors: education

Summary

The Global Teenager Project Ghana was launched in September 1999 with only four schools. Since then, the collaboration has extended to involve over fourteen schools and five hundred students. The Global Teenager Project focuses on two-way communication and learning between students in different countries. The primary activities are the biannual “Learning Circles”.

Update

Updated: 2005-07-28

For the latest updates on the Global Teenager Ghana project, check www.globalteenager.org.gh.

Introduction

The project was established in 1999 following a pilot Internet Interchange between two schools in South Africa and schools in Netherlands. The Global Teenager Ghana became a full-fledged project in the Ghana country portfolio in 2003, having been a branch of the larger international IICD supported project, Global Teenager. Coordinated by Rescue Mission Ghana, a local NGO, the project has managed to generate a lot of enthusiasm in a short space of time.

Objectives

Focusing on teenagers in Secondary Schools, as well as their teachers, the Global Teenager Project has two principal objectives.

1) Using the Internet and especially email to catalyze structured exchanges among schools and teachers, to foster inter-cultural awareness and understanding.
This objective is focused on the use of ICTs to connect local and international learners and teachers, developing educational content, promoting cross culture understanding and raising ICT literacy and awareness in schools.
The primary instrument is the 'Learning Circle'. Through this interactive Internet and email platform students and teachers meet to jointly research, discuss, and develop answers to learning goals. The International learning circles are hosted on a central platform, providing interfaces in English, French, and Spanish.

2) Promoting new ways of learning and teaching, to enhance the opportunities to young people.
Through this objective ICTs are used to build educational impact on the ground, through improved learning content, new teaching methods, but also through local capacity development, networking, and use of ICTs. The focus is on individual teenagers, using ICTs to their educational experience more stimulating, challenging and ultimately more relevant in today's information societies.
The primary instruments of change are local Global Teenager 'Networks'. Operating as independent entities, these networks mainly comprise teachers but are led by local coordinators with necessary facilitation, ICT and pedagogical skills. Key to the sustainability of these local networks is the local support of the Government, professional associations, and the private sector that these networks evolve into joint ventures or partnerships with other related ÍCT - enabled 'initiatives that may be active in the country.

Planned outputs

By the end of the project, it is expected that the following broad objectives would have been met:
1. An increase in awareness among multiple-stakeholders in the educational sectors on the practical use of ICTs for teaching and learning processes and education in general.
2. An increase in the amount of teachers and students benefiting from professional development in basic ICT and Basic Web Development Skills.
3. An improved quality (content) in Ghanaian schools increase the quality of Ghanaian schools contributing to the LC.
4. Provide a sound basis to explore the possibilities of integrating ICTs formally in the secondary school curricula (content, teaching methodologies etc) and to develop local content (in key subject areas). In addition, there shall be evaluation process to access the impact of the project.

Development Impacts

Global Teenager Ghana’s low-tech, inexpensive, easy-to-use ICT package is not only helping to bridge both the cultural and the digital divide between secondary schools in the developed and the developing world, it is also helping to catalyse exciting ICT initiatives in countries like Ghana. Potential partners are encouraged to come on board with a view to providing additional support to the schools currently taking part in the project. Not only will this help to consolidate the project, it will also strengthen its chances of becoming mainstreamed into Ghana’s educational sector. By increasing awareness about the project and generating interest in it, initiatives such as the Global Teenager Website Contest certainly enhance this process.

Results

One of the exciting activities linked to GTG is the bi-annual Global Teenager Website competition. Now in its second year, the contest is proving to be very popular: Not only is it an innovative and exciting way to train teachers and pupils in the art of website development, but at the end of the five-week process each school has its own school website. Five Global Teenager Ghana schools took part in the contest. As part of the contest, three students and one teacher from each of the schools received training in web development, based on face-to-face training and follow-up visits every week to the school during the five-week period. At the end of the five-week period, the schools then uploaded their sites. For the first time the sites were also hosted in the ‘new’ GTP Ghana site www.globalteenager.org.gh.

Besides developing new ICT skills, another positive result of the contest is that it acts as an extra motivating factor: today, even more schools want to participate actively in the Learning Circles (LCs). In addition, in at least one case (Accra Academy) there is now a ‘deepening’ of the project to include eleven classes. As a result of the activities carried out for this competition another interesting spin-off is that Rescue Mission Ghana and IICD are now finalising discussions with ThinkQuest Africa (TQA) to support the basic ICT skills training and web development programme for teachers, students and the community. This programme forms part of a wider TQA strategy geared towards enabling the participants to master the tools required to develop websites and enable them to participate in TQA. The activity will also be supported by IICD’s training partner, Atlantic Computer Training.

Project Owner : Rescue Mission Ghana - Sustainable Development Training Centre

Project Partners : The Global Teenager Ghana project is the result of co-operation between SchoolNet Africa and IICD. ThinkQuestAfrica is another partner of this project.

Project Contact : IICD