Ghana Education Service (GES) in partnership with the Ghana Society for Education Technology (GESET) has launched a teacher survey and learning application christened “TeacherTapp”.
The mobile survey app, GhanaNewsOnline.com.gh has gathered would asks teachers three questions at the end of each day; provide information on how others had responded to the questions and then provides each with a short piece of professional development reading to help teachers reflect and improve their classroom practice.
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Dr. Kwabena Bempah Tandoh, the Deputy Director General of GES who launched the app at the offices of GES in Accra, encouraged GES teachers and private school teachers across Ghana to download “TeacherTapp” and use the readings to inform professional discussions at Professional Learning Community[PLC] meetings and build their teaching portfolios whiles eventually earning points CPD units.
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In December 2019, the Deputy Director General of GES said, “TeacherTapp” was awarded a grant from the international development fund in the United Kingdom to run a feasibility study of “TeacherTapp” in Ghana. Ghana, he adds, was selected due to its well-developed educational system.
Using “TeachTapp”, Dr. Kwabena Bempah Tandoh said, GES intend to build a successful and sustainable dataset on teaching in Ghana, working in collaboration with all GES’s key agencies including National Teaching Council, NIB and NaCCa. This, he stressed, would be done hand in hand with GES’s teachers.
Commenting on the three fundamental goals that inspired the launch of the “TeacherTapp”, he said, the app would provide every Ghanaian teacher free access to world- class professional development materials and resources so they can become world-class practitioners. The Deputy Director General of GES also said the app would provide additional avenues for Ghanaian teachers to connect with each other and give them a greater sense of community by learning from the experiences of their colleagues across the country.
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The “TeacherTapp”, Dr Kwabena Bempah Tandoh further said, “TeacherTapp” would provide GES and other agencies including policy makers and non-governmental organizations real time data on teaching and learning which would inform the decision GES make to improve its schools and learning outcomes.
The Deputy Director General of GES said “we passionately believe by working together we can make incremental strides in providing quality education to our students and make substantial gains in our quest to achieve SDG Goal 4. We are confident that the education community shares this vision and are equally excited to collaborate.”
In a related development, Dr Kwabena Bempah Tandoh says his outfit has introduced Professional Development Days as part of the formal academic calendar for schools. This, he said, is evident by the fact that GES’s academic calendar provides four free days for pupils to stay at home and allow teachers to get together and improve themselves.
Additional, he said, every Wednesday in the afternoon, students close an hour early making it possible for Ghanaian teachers to use that time to work in their professional learning communities to share ideas and improve their work. February 27th, 2020 was observed as a continuous professional development day.
Source: Adovor Nutifafa
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