Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Interview with Rev. E.K Dadebo, National e-LA Coordinator at the Min. of Information and National Orientation on 22nd April 2008

Rev. Dadebo enlightened us on the benefits participants especially stand to get from the 3rd International Conference on ICT and Development, Education and training scheduled for the Accra International Conference Centre, Ghana from 28-30th May 2008.

What is your understanding of the 3rd International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and training in Accra from 28-30th May 2008?

The 3rd International Conference on e-learning which is slated for the 28-30th of May 2008, is intended to be a capacity building programme for all those who are interested in learning and e-learning. Certainly, ICTs has very positive impact to make as far as the enhancement of learning is concerned and we believe that the up-coming conference on e-learning in May will serve to provide a forum where expects in the field are coming together to share their ideas and the experiences that they have gathered over the years in the implementation of various ICT deployment in e-learning and we also believe that as we are at the threshold of entering the era, we will want to enhance teaching and learning with technology, that is why we are having this programme.

Quite apart from the above, the forum will provide an avenue for people to get to know the various strategies of technology options to be deployed in the use of e-learning, because certainly, we have different conditions in different parts of the world and therefore there may be people with similar conditions like we have in Ghana who have been able to deploy ICTs in the work that they do and we believe that this conference will be an eye opener.

As part of the conference also, the EU is ready to provide funds to tertiary institutions, Universities to go into research and development initiatives. There are also funds that are also available for African Nations who partner with EU countries so that they too can take advantage of the funds to be able to go into such initiatives for R&D and we believe that this is a good opportunity.It is expected that, these initiatives will affect our thinking and orientation as far as teaching and learning is concerned so that we will be able to modernise our teaching and learning and i need to mention that the learning styles of students have changed. They are more interested in digital materials but if you give them a text book to read now, they cannot even read up to 20 pages before they become bored. So we know that e-learning is a good medium that will actually get our people down and learn. We also think that if we create such opportunities for them, it will enhance the teaching methodologies of teachers because they will have to adapt their teaching methods to the learning styles of students. We believe that this is a big opportunity that we have and once we are having a cream of expects from around the world, it is a great opportunity for which we will want to call on all to get involved, to support and as much as possible provide sponsorship packages for teachers and others to come in and find out how exactly they can benefit from the platforms for e-learning around the world so that we too can move on the same pedestal as others in the other parts of the world.

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