Over the last few months we have been working with a number of partners to make STEM Open Educational Resources (OERs) accessible to teachers in four Ghanaian schools. The aim is to show that with the right access, Ghanaian teachers can produce overwhelmingly positive educational outcomes among students.
Siemens Stiftung, an international organization known for their excellent contributions to sustainable social development have over the years accumulated over 3,000 individual resources that teachers can freely use on their online portal. These well curated videos, images, experiments and text, may indeed be free but if you live under conditions of “expensive internet”, then access is still a problem. \
Enter BlueTown, an organization with a proven track record of connecting individuals who lack internet access. BlueTown specializes in providing small portions of the internet at no cost, effectively bridging the digital divide. Leveraging their local cloud service, they took on the responsibility of hosting Siemens Stiftung’s extensive repository of over 3,000 educational resources. Put these two organizations together and you have an opportunity to make Open Educational Resources available to teachers in Ghanaian schools at no cost. However, this partnership was still missing one integral component; “Who will guide Ghanaian teachers through the maze of 3,000+ resources to exactly what they need to develop their students?”. This is where the team at Kabod Group served as the final gear to get the AccessSTEM project moving.
Over the last few months, we have been collaborating to identify needs of Ghanaian teachers in four schools to enhance their access to open educational resources. Very early on, it was obvious that many teachers were aware of online resources that could assist in their work, however the “Where?” remained a challenge. Additionally, many had ideas of creating and sharing original resources to assist other teachers across the country, however the “How?” also remained a challenge. Indeed the needs of teachers in the four schools could be considered representative of many teachers across Ghana and the successes we have chalked up makes the future look bright.
As we draw the first stage of this project to a close, here is what we have achieved.
- A local cloud platform for teachers with free access to over 200 contextually relevant resources
- A series of 100 activities with work sheets for both teachers and students to enhance experiential learning
- A community of practise for teachers who wish to create and share original OERs
- An online space for sharing newly found resources to every teachers benefit
At Kabod Group, we are excited to see what the next stages of the AccessSTEM project brings as we look to support teachers who desire to develop resources for their own use and that of their colleagues. Over the course of this project we have learnt that teachers are unable to offer their best due to limitations in relation to time, skills and money. We are excited to work with teachers going forward to collaboratively make more of these three fundamental resources available to all.
This is your opportunity to join us on the journey.
Written by Prince Teye-Gaga
