National Volunteer DAY @ KETASCO

September 29, 2014Uncategorizedstudents ketasco

Breaking news National Volunteer day is here again. Posters, videos hovering both on Social Medias and television stations about the upcoming event. National Volunteer Day is a program being run by Ghana think foundation, an NGO based both Ghana and USA. They also run other programs including Barcamp Ghana, Junior camp Ghana. National volunteer day, which falls on 21^st of September. The initiative is to get as many people as possible in Ghana to volunteer their time or do community service on founders day holiday.
I have been to a lot of their events here in Ghana and it was inspiring. They even sponsored me to partake in a workshop on Entrepreneurship Skills which happened at West Africa Civic Society (WACSI) East Legon. I wasn’t able to attend to last year’s National Volunteer Day. But this time round I did. I was blissful when I saw the advertisement of the program. Quickly I read through what they posted and I register as a volunteer on Eventbrite.

I volunteer to tutor in Information Communication Technology and Mobile learning. I went to see my Head of Department what I intended doing. He said wow! That is a very good idea. I was feel with joy and happiness upon the go ahead. However my plan is to make it for both Junior High School (JHS) student and Senior High Student (SHS) but unfortunately the SHS are on vacation.
Nevertheless, I swiftly take a bicycle and ride it to the various schools in the municipality for a representative for the event. I was welcome by all schools in a cordial manner. I really like how they were excited to hear the good news I brought to them. Without hesitating I demanded 5 representative from each school I went to. This is due to lack of enough computers in the lab.
Eventually I needed only 35 participant for the program, at the end of it all 30 of them turned up. I prepared the lab in a delighted manner upon receiving the names of the participants. My Head of Department Mr Heloo Paul Kobla supported me in all endeavour by given out his digital camera, LCD projector just to mention few. The program started with 30 participants on board. We started the program exactly 12:45pm.
I started with a motivational talk afterwards was the tuition. I realise majority of them have no idea about computers. Check this up! The computers were on before they entered during the tutoring I realise most of them are not concentrating so I asked them to put off their monitors. Something miraculously happened in the lab, some were refreshing their computer, and others were pressing the power buttons of their system unit. The serious part of it all was that some are in dilemma. So I base everything from the beginning of a computer. This included

Part of a computer
How to fix it
How to put it on and off
BIOS
OS
GUI
How to use the mouse/ keyboard layout
Creating a folder
Restore and delete things from the recycle bin

And a lot more. We tackled them both practicals and theory. I would like to share another astonishing one that happened when I ask them to research on types of Operating System we have. Here are some of the funny answers that popped up; WordPad, Windows Explorer, Windows 8.5 and a lot of funny answers. I wrote this to highlight what is happening in our schools and how this event has really impacted them. I don’t blame them but I rather blame the country in which we live. There are a lot to be done in this schools, not only they but even SHS and Universities are inclusive. We are in an era whereby technology is everything. Nevertheless, all the participants are very excited for the event. We closed the program exactly 3:30pm as schedule. We snapped a lot of pictures that day before they departed.

The next event will be on Monday. Early that Monday morning, I went to the computer lab earlier than ever to arrange it. The edition for Monday’s event is well packaged. We started @ 12:20pm sharp with Internet Browsers. We talked about the types, Extensions, plugins, add-ons, History, Bookmark, Search Engines, Address bar. I mean everything about the web browser. We discussed how to use it to read e-books, how to save a web page to portable digital format (PDF). From there we moved on to the following training;

How to download
How to develop content for mobile devices
What raspberry pi is
Fixing a Lego Robot

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I taught them what they should know about this devices. It was time to do the practical aspect of this devices themselves. I ask who want to work on the Lego robot. Astoundingly all the girls that came wants to work on it. Most of them exhibited interest for fixing a robot, working on the pi, the kindle e-book reader etc. So I grouped them to brainstorm on making something impressive with the devices.
They did them successfully and were filled with joy. Later on pictures were snapped by the groups and also together. This is not all. Before I draw curtains over this, as a patriotic citizen of the country we sang our National Anthem before we closed the event exactly 6:00pm.

Source: Noah Alorwu

The workshop is history, but we will continue with our new experience

July 14, 2014Uncategorizedstudents ketasco

LOOKING-BACK
Closely, slowly and sleepy I was that night. I looked each second and every moment out of the window expecting the arrival of my guests for the workshop. I came a week earlier to prepare everything needed for the progress of the workshop. Before I realized, I was in a prodigious dilemma whether to sleep or wait till my guest arrive. The weather was favorable for sleep. It rained actually that night. Unexpectedly, I woke up the next day. That is just by the way. (written by Noah, assistant of the workshop)

The beginning has just come for the workshop to commence. On this faithful day 10th June, 2014 here comes everyone positioned for setting up time for the workshop, this is due to the workshop not entering into class hours for both the student and teachers.
I had a glance at the participant and all I could see was smiles and joy all over. Do you know the reason why? They are going to learn new things, not only that but also have the zeal to excite the evolution of the workshop.

The workshop was the outstanding one. The workshop entails a lot of activities that boost the intriguing of it. This includes researching, interviews, video recording, picture snapping.

I would like to draw your attention to this marvelous task given out.
A half shell was found at the beach by Prof. Grimus. She then brought it to the workshop for the groups working on biology to work on. The question was – which shell is that? The competition included documentation of the research process. This was a tough one of course but they were able to identify which shell it is by researching on the internet. Have you seen how useful the internet is? I also tried to figure it out myself, using Google goggles; but all turned other way round because Google did not have the image in the data base. But it was solved! The best researchers were Mr. Divine Heloo and Lawson Marc.

……. AND THE FINAL DAY OF THE COURSE
On the 27th June each member’s portfolio together with each group’s micro content were evaluated by Professor Grimus (Graz University of Technology), Worlali Senyo (MCs in IT, Accra), and Michael Pollak(Vienna University of Technology). Other activities including blog posting were evaluated too.
Here are the winners of the award:
Best Portfolio Teachers

1. Paul Heloo (ICT)
2. Pius Dumashie (Woodwork)
3. Florence Eyram Kuwornu (English Language)
4. Divine Heloo (Biology)

Best Portfolio Students

1. Sakoe Courage
2. Lawson Marc
3. Emmanuel Agbakpe
4. Ativor Jonathan

Best Micro-content
NETWORKING IN COMPUTERS
1. Sakoe Courage
2. Gawuga Teddy

BIOLOGY 2
1. Divine Heloo
2. Lawson Mac
3. Agbakpe Emmanuel

CONCORD IN ENGLISH
1. Florence Eyram Kuwornu
2. Dumenyah Delali
3. Ansah Edna

Best blog posters
1. Edna Ansah
2. Delali Dumenya

Prices for the awards were donated by the Austrian Computer Society: T- Shirts, and Caps.
And by friends and sponsors from Austria: Laptops and E-book readers.

Finally all student participants were given NOKIA mobile phones (without SIM-cards!), to continue with further learning with their mobile devices.

Gradually the workshop is approaching the end. Everyone was not happy, because they wished it could continue, I think that is how it’s supposed to be. The night before the closing ceremony was superb. The student participants came to the lab to snap pictures, chat, share their experience and ideas of the outcome of the course. Saturday was tremendous!

On Saturday the 28th June, 2014, we planned to end our workshop at the beach. So after the photographs at the gate, we came to the lab to do whatever we wanted to do before we took off. On our way, we went to the P.E masters bungalow to take a ball which we played on the way to the beach. It was really fun. Around 10:30 am, we all arrived at the beach. We were all happy because it has been a privilege to go out to the beach without been castigated.

There was no place for us to sit so we all sat in a canoe. A man later arrived and asked all the girls to stand up from the canoe so it’s a taboo for a girl or a lady to sit in the canoe.

By that time every female stood up from the canoe to avoid further talk. He also said if a girl or lady sits in the canoe, it will create problems if they go fishing. That is superstition, right?
Special gratitude to Prof. Grimus and Michael Pollak for their great work.
Thanks to all who support to the success of making this workshop on mobile learning succulent.

Source:
Noah Alorwu
Courage Sakoe
Gawuga Teddy

why ebooks are awesome

June 25, 2014studentstudents ketasco

Everyone(except young people) wonders why young people feel lazy to carry bags and bags of books around for everyday studies.The older generation are the most controversial people matters of this sort “i carried them when i was your age so why can`t you carry them around too?”they mostly ask. Yet few of them seem to realize how much times have changed and how much technology have advanced.

books are bulky to carry, i mean, there is no point in carrying so much books around causing yourself so much pain in the back when there is actually a very portable device called an e-book reader.an e-book reader is a small device that enables the user to upload documents of interest . This is done by converting word files through a software called calibre.

BENEFITS

portability

The e-book is small and can be carried almost everywhere.at any time as compared to normal books.normal books may be too heavy to be carried around every time. Books are cool sometimes but how to carry them around is not always convenient.that’s why the e-book is much advice-able to use .

battery advantage

No one can ever under estimate the charging ability of the e-book. it could last as long as a week or more when fully charged. this is so because, once an e-book file is loaded on the device, the battery stops working almost entirely.this allows the device save a lot of energy therefore it does not require frequent charging.

storage ability

The electronic book has the ability to store up to a hundred books. it also has memory card slots through which memory cards can be slotted into to serve as an external memory. this may be very helpful for people who want to keep lots of books at a time.

FUTURE REFERENCE

With normal books, pages could get torn and information may be lost and it could get wet during a down pour, yet with a n e-book reader everything is pretty much simple. you could actually keep a book without getting it torn or getting it wet(please don’t shower with it).

There are a whole lot of benefits of using the e-book reader for teaching and learning. Get one!

Delali Dumenyah
Edna Ansah

networking

June 23, 2014studentstudents ketasco

The second week of the workshop was mainly focused on the creation of micro content and converting the content to an epub and PDF files. This sounded a bit easy when we were introduced to it. But as time went on we realized it very difficult and time consuming. We did our best and came out with a splendid result.

We lost our teacher because of his unpunctuality , so we had to do everything on our own as students. We experienced a lot of difficulties such as delay in content creation since we don’t know what we were all doing. Later on, with the help of Michael as our new teacher, we came back on track. The most interesting part was that, Michael knew a lot about the topic we were treating which was networking of computers.

He taught us a lot and helped us to understand what we were doing. Before we type anything into the content, Michael gives us a clue on that particular subtopic and allows us to do it on our own which he later comes in to evaluate. Initially, we had to copy images from the Internet but after Michael became our teacher, we understood the concept and drew it on paper as a draft which we later took pictures of and incorporated it in our content. Thanks to Michael, we had a perfect content which can be viewed as a PDF or epub file on small portable devices with small screens.

Sakoe Courage
Gawuga Teddy

developing microcontent

June 23, 2014teacherteachers ketasco

The second week of the workshop focused mainly on the development of micro content. It involved the creation of teams based on subject areas and each team was made up of a teacher and two students to collaborate and write the content of a particular topic.

The development of the micro content was tedious at the beginning of the week but got more interesting as we progressed. Teachers and students shared the tasks. In my group, for example, students searched for pictures appropriate to be included in the content taking note on the copyright issues.

On Friday June 20th, 2014, we successfully complete our development. With the support of Professor Grimus, we converted the final content into EPUB and PDF file for e-readers. The final works were tested on e-readers and they look beautiful and appeared very easy to use in our classrooms for teaching and learning.

Other important topics were covered last week including Copyright and Open Content, Guidance and Social Network.

For teachers, last week’s activities helped to develop the appropriate skills in the development of content for our students. It also gave us ideas about the integration of mobile devices as tools for learning in our classroom even though it is not a common practice in our part of the world. Also, we identify how to give tasks to students ahead of lessons and guide the students to use mobile devices to make research as part of the learning process.

Last week’s activities convinced us that mobile devices are important part of learning in today’s world so should be permitted in our schools with the needed guidance from teachers.

Divine D. Heloo
Marc Saint Lawson
Agbakpe Emmanuel

creating microcontent

June 20, 2014studentstudents ketasco

The second week was full of activities and fun when Professor Grimus told us to create a micro content based on our favorite subject and we were divided into groups that is one teacher to two students to develop a micro content on their subject that can be readable on the e-book reader.

As the days goes by Prof. Grimus taught us how to use the creative common license and copyright law and we were eager to know more about the copyright and creative license because the course was full of fun, so it took us to finish on the second day.

The most excitement part is we were asked to developed our own portfolio that is day to day activities been held during the workshop to keep you on track.

Our major challenges we faced was the black out.

This week has arose our expectation to see what we will be doing in the other week of the workshop.

Agbetsiafa Happy
Abayateye Lilian

Certificate for Noah

June 19, 2014teacherteachers ketasco

Noah Alorwu, a student of Ketasco who participated in the Austrian Computer Society competition and won a prize for robotics, was presented with a certificate and a Raspberry pi, at morning assembly on Thursday, 12th June 2014.

First week for teachers

June 18, 2014teacherteachers ketasco

Introduction to the use of mobile devices in teaching and learning

This is an idea propagated by Pro. Grimus to encourage the use of mobile devices in teaching and learning in senior high and technical schools. This requires that lessons are made into smaller learning unit to be uploaded into mobile devices for easy accessibility. it makes it easy for both teachers and students to get access to their lessons and assignment at any point without much hustle.

IMPOSSIBLE! is what we thought of the whole idea on our first day at the workshop but now we are so enthused to be there to begin each day’s task.

The first task about portfolio building was a bit challenging but with practice a whole lot of the participant have improved their skills in this task. Portfolio building encourages one to put tracks of daily activities for reference. it was an interesting experience when both teachers and the students had to research and give an analytical power point presentation to the group.

Now ask us about the drop box idea and we will answer wow!!!! The drop box is a tool that allows you to share documents or data with a group of people or the public.

The picture taking task was another exciting activity. Students and teachers were given cameras for an outdoor exploration of picture taking of images pertaining to their subject area for the micro contents.

The team building is working perfectly. It’s amazing to see teachers and students paired and cooperatively working together to accomplish task of writing lesson units for the micro content for the school’s private blog

Our first week

June 18, 2014studentstudents ketasco

Our first day at the workshop was full of excitement and eagerness to know what we were going to learn. We were introduced to the importance of mobile phones in our everyday learning activities.

In African countries the use of mobile phones in second cycle institutions are seen as disturbance to students since only the negative aspect of it is considered whiles the positive aspect is neglected. This workshop has made us student see the positive aspect of mobile learning more important than the negative.

One of the exciting moments in the workshop was when we had to take pictures related to some subject we selected.

The picture above show some students taking picture of the subject they chose. That is sports.

Other subjects which were available for students were: Biology , Arts , Physics , Architecture , English Language , Social studies and Information communication Technology(I.C.T).

The pictures taking were to be used for the workshop’s blog so we were taught how to reduce the size of the pictures using Irfan view software into smaller bytes.

Hmm, the presentation time was the most nervous time for we the students, because we had to stand in front of teachers to make presentations about our interest.

The latter part of the first week saw as creating portfolios about our day- to – day activities; keeping track of your daily activity in form of a document helps you recollect them when you have forgotten. We also developed micro contents for some specific subjects chosen.

The first week was interesting but the frequent black outs was a major challenge to us.

The first week has arose our expectations to see what the other weeks have in stock for us.

Vanniel Joey Abel
Marc Saint Lawson

Our Team

June 17, 2014studentteachers ketasco

In june 2014 our team of ten teachers and 18 students, under supervision of Prof. Grimus and Bacc. Pollak, took part in a workshop on mobile learning.
We are developing micro content units on a variety of topics, including biology, networking, arts, weaving, etc.

ketascomobile

2014 Ketasco Mobile Learning Workshop