My Tuesday in Ghana

Today I teamed up with the other two US teachers to put on formal presentations for most of the classes in the school.  We figured out a way to rig up a projector to show some pictures, and video clips from our own home.  Our hope was to teach our cooperating teachers how to use short video clips as a way to have our classes communicate.  Although we would like to by able to Skype, the little computer access that the students have really limits what they can do individually.  Below the girls say hello.

Several of the girls also had questions for Oconomowoc students today:

In response to yesterday's videos from the girls, several groups of Oconomowoc High School Students put videos together discussing their own lives.

One of the things the completely blows me away about the students at Accra Girls School is how hungry they are for any type of education.  I look around the school and see so much drive but so few resources.  It is a complicated issue.  Say for example that someone was to give the school 100 computers.  That would be great but if you even plug in 3 or four of them, it would be too much for the wiring of the school which is pretty basic.  Most classrooms don't even have working lights and the entire time we have been here the water has not been running other than from a pump in the middle of the school grounds.  I really think that the key to success here and in a lot of Africa lies in the utilization of mobile devices.  Most of the girls have such things at home but are not allowed to have them on school grounds.  Given the fact that Africa is smarter about using cell phones than most of the rest of the world, it is clear their is power here.  The problem though lies in the fact that the idea of using cell phones in school would in many ways be against the culture that many of the girls are brought up in.  Their parents don't want them to date an limit time spent with the opposite sex.  Many feel that cell phones in school would just provide opportunities for the girls to get distracted on their studies.  Since everything here is dependent on them passing their final exams (which are common to Ghana and 3 other Western African countries), anything to that draws away from the test is often seen as a distraction.