Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom, Ghana

Flag of Ghana

Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom,Ghana.

The Ghanaian education system relied heavily on face-to-face teaching and learning in primary and secondary schools. No basic and secondary school students are permitted to own or be seen with a digital device like phones or computers at school. With the emergence of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers and students are now forced to rely on remote learning, which primarily focuses on personalizing education by developing alternative learning models to facilitate high-quality learning and teaching efficiency. The Ghana educational policy prioritizes on ICTs as 21st-century skills to advance remote learning in Ghanaian SHS but little or no stimulation is provided for prioritizing digital literacy and Open Education Resources to develop vital media and information literacy; understand how information is produced; and how students use information.

This program will assist teachers and students in Ghana in improving their ICT skills, media and information literacy skills, content writing skills, reading culture, and providing them with an alternative format for learning new things outside of the regular school curriculums, while improving Wikipedia. This program has the potential to improve their research skills, such as the ability to make sense of information, the ability to verify, evaluate, and shift reliable information from information chaos, and the ability to use the information to create new knowledge. By tying Wikipedia to the components of UNESCO's Media and Information Literacy framework, it will also assist instructors to understand and use Wikipedia as a learning tool. In addition, this training will help to bridge the digital gap by encouraging collaboration among students and fostering better relationships.

Program Goals

1. Create awareness among 50 Senior High School teachers in Northern Ghana on the effective usage of Wikipedia as a learning tool for retrieving, creating, and monitoring open educational resources by July 30th, 2022.
2. The 50 Senior High School teachers in Northern Ghana enrolled in the program will understand, access, retrieve, and effectively integrate the lessons learned from this program into their classroom activities by June, 2022.
3. By July 2022, 40 of these SHS teachers will have received a certificate of completion showing they can implement new classroom strategies to foster media and information literacy using Wikipedia.

Timeline and Activities

Planning

From the 1st to the 2nd week of June 2022; Preparation of program materials, adapting general materials, localizing some sections of the modules, and adjusting the design for better printing quality, etc. General printing of curriculum materials for the program

From the 3rd to 4th week of June 2022;

• Promotion and dissemination of the program
• A Call for Teachers
• Selection of participants
• Conducting pre-survey/need assessment for teachers
• Creating communication channels via Social Media Platforms

Implementation

Session 1 23rd July 2022 Session 1 Module 1: Mentoring, Office Hours, and Monitoring

Session 2 30th July 2022 Session 2 Module 2: Mentoring, Office Hours, and Monitoring

Session 3 6th August 2022 Module 3: Mentoring-Editing Workshop, Office Hours, and Monitoring

Session 4 31st August 2022 Revision of assignments, course modules, and issuing of Certificates to qualified participants.

Mode of Implementation

This program will adopt the Blended mode of implementation: The 4 physical training activities will take place offline adopting the hybrid approach (Mix method) while one-on-one supports and follow-up will be done using different communication channels.

Evaluation

The evaluation questions will be imputed to Google Form from May 10th to June 8th, 2022.

1. .Print Evaluation Questions for 30 Teachers (English).
2. .Final Interview and Data Collation Preparation
3. .Launch of Online Post-Survey (email and promotion during the graduation ceremony).
4. .Scheduling and conducting interviews with participating teachers.
5. .Compile and organize interview results.
6. .Generate and analyze post-survey data for processing.
7. .Compile and organize post-survey and interview results.
8. .Preparation of project reports 15th to 22nd June, 2022

Implementation team

• Ibrahim Abdul-Fatawu (Certified lead trainer)
• Yussif Abdul-Rasheed ( Communication specialist)
• Dauda Ayisha (Logistics manager)
• Salifu Sulemana (Resource person)
• Salifu Alhassan ( Resource person)
• Fuseini Mohammed(co-trainer)
• Inusah Bawa Nuhu( co-trainer)
• Yakubu Abdul-Rauf Wumbei(co-trainer)

Contact/Social media pages

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Registration

Register to join the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom-Ghana WhatsApp group for one-on-one training and support during the program. Please note: This program runs from March to May 2022.

How to participate

Sign in or create a New Account on Wikipedia. Enroll on the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom - Ghana Outreach Dashboard to track your contributions. Sign up in the participants section on this page.

List of Participants

To participate you need to sign up on the participants section and join the dashboard to track your contributionsTo add your name, edit this section and type '#~~~' below without quotes.

Program Report

This section is put into three subsections; Needs Assessment Analysis, Mid-project report, and Final evaluation report. Each of these sub-sections is elaborated as shown below.

Needs assessment and planning outcomes

Here are responses and analyses to the Needs Assessment questions.

Details of any partnership agreements and outreach

Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program in Ghana planning phase commenced in May 2022 to June 2022. May 2022 was characterized by serious planning of how the whole the program will be implemented. The Implementing Team had series of meetings where deliberations were made, we arrived at ideas that we used in implementing the program. Outreach campaigns begun in June 2022 where we embarked on visits and phone calls to distribute letters to the various education stakeholders. We made a visit to the Northern Regional Education Office and served the Director with a letter, we also served a letter to the Ministry of Education. We concluded our visits by serving the various Senior High Schools Headteachers with letters. There was a tough bureaucracy that we needed to go through to gain official partnerships with some stakeholders. We finally partnered with the various Senior High Schools, we also got partnership with Read to Change Initiative Ghana, Wizkids academy and Simli Radio Station.

The various Senior High Schools made their staff available for the program.

Read To Change Initiative Ghana offered us venue to have our various team meetings and offered free book keeping consultancy in order for us to keep proper records of our expenditure.

Simli Radio Station offered us massive discounted airtime to talk about the program and also promote it.

Wizkids Academy pledged to provide us with a discounted and condusive venue and food for the program.