NO BED NO DESK

Ghana woke up to the shocking news of the death of a seventy year old man because of allegedly no bed in all the seven hospitals he was taken to for medical attention. This has spark and resurrected debate about our health care system in Ghana.Some people are putting the blame on the nurses and doctors and others too on the Government. 

My greatest worry is that we have move away from cash and carry where our health delivery system is supported by health insurance such that minor ailments and emergencies are to be catered for under the national health insurance scheme. Is there anything we are not doing well or haven't put in place? This is a question I leave for the health experts to interrogate.

However, my main focus as an educationist is that, if healthcare delivery which is deemed to have an insurance package in order to make it accessible to all is going through this challenge or challenges, then what about our educational system especially at the second cycle level which has recently in September 2017 been made free so as to make it also accessible to students from poor financial background?

Are we going to witness a similar event where headmasters and teachers can turn parents and students away from their schools because of no-desk? Are we going to see our young roaming the streets without secondary school education? This is bound to happen and if it happens then it will defeat the United Nation's sustainable development goal 4 which is provision of quality education for all citizens. Nonetheless I am confident that this is already happening in some of our schools. The reason is quite simple. The implementation of the free SHS policy led to an exponential increase in the number of students into our public senior high schools. Headmasters of some of our schools have had to improvise some facilities in order to accommodate these students. it is obvious that others who could not improvised might have turned some students away from their schools.

An outsider of the educational system may argue that this shouldn't happen because there is a central body that place students in our schools and that schools are made to present the number of student population they will require base on the facilities they have. But is that what is on the ground? Even if everything is perfect as planned then it means that potential students who could not be placed by the central body- computerised school selection and placement system(CSSPS) are likely to be turned away because of no desk.  Taking a critical look at the number of students who have taken the 2018 BECE exams and are likely to be placed in our senior high schools, this problem of no desk is bound to occur.With the increased number of students in our senior high schools, the big question is what will happen to our tertiary institutions? There will be a carry over of this problem into our tertiary institutions from the year 2020 unless educational authorities design pragmatic ways of dealing with the situation. This is where l commend the University of Ghana for taking the lead to strengthen its distance learning centers in the regions in anticipation of the increase in students enrollment.
A distance education programme enable students to be hooked unto a learning management system where they can access any learning material from their own comfort zones. The argument form private tertiary institutions that the University of Ghana is trying to play them out of the market is ill timed since the former is only being proactive in ensuring that the bulk of students at the SHS level who will graduate in 2020 will also gain addmission and receive tertiary education.

As a student of distance education and e-learning, I will be so much hurt if any student is turned away because of no desk in a school. This is due to the fact that in this 21st century face-to-face contact with a teacher or an educational facility alone is not used to determine the attendance of an individual in a school. With the use of appropriate learning management systems(LMS), individuals can enroll in a school and go through a curriculum from start to finish without stepping a foot or sitting on any physical desk in the school.

The no bed syndrome in our hospitals should be a wake up call for our educational authorities to look up to e-learning else the educational system will soon be plague with a no desk syndrome. 

TEACHERS MANAGERS / MENTORS: ROLE MODELS IN A VIRTUAL CLASSROOM

TEACHERS MANAGERS / MENTORS: ROLE MODELS IN A VIRTUAL CLASSROOM: In my earlier posts the discussions centred on teachers as managers or as mentors. Most of my commentators strongly support the fact that t...

ROLE MODELS IN A VIRTUAL CLASSROOM

In my earlier posts the discussions centred on teachers as managers or as mentors. Most of my commentators strongly support the fact that teachers as managers in the 21st century cannot be downplayed. The teachers will continue to do most of the normal things they do but the mentorship role is where some people raised concerns and I wish to provide some answers in this post.

 As a teacher I have received several good wishes from my students admiring me from afar. The reasons they give are simple that they like me for what I do and how I do some of the things I do. One may argue that these are complements we receive all the time but as a teacher it has so many implications for the profession. For example, it helps to improve the students academic work, there is respect among teacher and students and discipline is greatly ensured in the class or in the school.
In this picture here is a student of mine who got close to me and requested to join me in taking this photograph. In a virtual classroom can the students have access to teachers in this same manner? Both teacher and student cannot meet in physical space like the picture here but is there a way the teacher can touch and impart the life of a student?
This is possible. Let us not forget that in the virtual classroom the teacher continues to do most of the normal activities like teaching, setting examination questions, marking , recording, giving comments etc. And with technology these activities become even more interesting to both teacher and students. As the they manage the virtual classrooms they also take the lead in serving as mentors and role models.
My own experience as a student on the Distance Education and E-learning programme at the University of Ghana gives me about three strong lecturers as my role models. This is not because we sometimes meet face-to face but because of how they handled their courses and manipulated the Sakai learning management platform to get to the students. They gave timely information to students, prompt releases of grades and comments and prompt feedback on students concerns are some of the things which endeared them to me.

Secondly on MOOCs one of my lecturers on the course - Leading Ambitious Teaching and Learning was Lizz Kolb. The MOOC is an entirely online programme or virtual classroom. I admired her for the course she teach, how she handles and with a video I was able to know who I was dealing with.
The teacher's role as a mentor and a role model in a virtual classroom is not in doubt at all. the way teachers go about teaching their courses, how the teach these course, the way they handle assignments and prompt responses to students can all endear them to their students. With the use of technology these days, synchronously the students and teachers can see each other through video conferencing, chart rooms or work together on Google Docs.

TEACHERS MANAGERS / MENTORS: TEACHERS MANAGERS/MENTORS

TEACHERS MANAGERS / MENTORS: TEACHERS MANAGERS/MENTORS: In the 21st century education is going through transformation in the sense that educational authorities are constantly thinking of moving aw...

THE TEACHER AND VIRTUAL CLASSROOM

TEACHERS MANAGERS/MENTORS

In the 21st century education is going through transformation in the sense that educational authorities are constantly thinking of moving away from the bricks and mortar classroom to a virtual classroom which makes use of the internet and other devices to help students learn at their own pace. This transformation has brought a myriad of debates on the educational front and one of such debates is the teacher's role in this virtual class.In the industrial age or the brick and mortar classroom, the teacher is or was the complete manager of what goes into the education of the students. He analyses, plans, execute the plan and evaluates his plans as well. The question is would there be or is there a change in the role of the teacher? Is the 21st century teacher a manager or a mentor.I perfectly agree with Tony Jones in his blog on this very topic on Sunday 28th august, 2011, that the online courses are gaining acceptance in traditional higher learning institutions. In this regard, the teacher's role as the fount of knowledge and the all-in-all must change to both a manager and a mentor at the same time. The teacher should be in a position to manager a virtual classroom with all the skills he/she can gather and at the same time guiding learners through a collaborative effort to attain academic success. keegan, 1986 stated that 'in evaluating learners, the teacher in the conventional classroom determines the criteria of successful learning and the learner is compelled either with fear, apathy and courtesy. But in the open and distance learning environment, the learner assumes a high degree of autonomy that might be uncomfortable in other educational activities'. This obviously indicates that as we advance into the era of open and distance learning environment, our learners must determine their own mode of individual learning. The teachers role should be a guide, motivator and a facilitator of learning outcome but not someone who takes the centre stage. The teacher should be in position to direct learners to places where they can source for informations and also recognise other discoveries that learners may bring and help them to make meaningful use of such materials.