Teachers mate 1 (TM1) the name for the laptops given to all teachers in all public schools, from the kindergarten to the senior high school level under the government’s One Teacher, One Laptop initiative.
The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, on Friday 3rd September, 2021, at the campus of the St Mary’s Senior High School, Accra, launched and handed over 350,000 laptops in fulfilment of government’s pledge to equip Ghana’s teachers with the requisite ICT skills to prepare the next generation for the Fourth Industrial revolution.
Under the initiative, Government is to provide every teacher in Ghana with a laptop preloaded with educational materials and with access to an E-Library equipped with books recommended by the GES on the various subjects. The materials can be accessed whether online or offline, and with free Wi-Fi available in 722 Senior High Schools across the country, access to the almost innumerable resources available on the internet is expected to aid research, teaching and learning.
The State would take up 70% of the cost of the laptop, while the teacher makes up the difference. The laptop, however, becomes the personal property of the teacher and serves the benefit of providing a tool for developing the teacher’s professional and personal capacity.
“Effective teaching and learning is critical to developing the human capacity for work, innovation and creativity; necessary ingredients for capacity building. Teachers are the indispensable pillars to this necessary capacity building. This initiative, in collaboration with the Teacher Unions, is to support the vision of the Ghana Education Service of creating an enabling environment to facilitate effective teaching and learning” The Vice President stated.
Conclusion
Effective teaching and learning borders on several factors such as action research, a well-resourced computer laboratories, continuous training of teaching staff etc. According to a technical report by William Anim Dankwa of Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Ghana, only about 5 percent of the 452 secondary schools in Ghana have computers. Where they exist, they are mostly part of administration. Only a few schools have computer rooms. As a result, teachers especially those teaching mathematics will find it extremely difficult to teach some mathematical concepts which easily executed with a projector and a laptop.
Training with regards to this initiative borders on computer competence and excludes utilization of TM1 for action research. Action research specifically refers to a disciplined inquiry done by a teacher with the intent that the research will inform and change his or her practices in the future. This research is carried out within the context of the teacher’s environment—that is, with the students and at the school in which the teacher works—on questions that deal with educational matters at hand.
Effective teaching and learning will become a reality if government creates a conducive atmosphere where TM1 – the laptop initiative interacts with the factors necessary for effective teaching and learning. Anything short of this will result in a mirage of effective teaching and learning.