Review educational policies to allow students use mobile phones in school – Christian Adinkra

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General News of Tuesday, 28 September 2021

Source: universenewsroom.com

2021-09-28

The government is being urged to review the law on the use of mobile phones in schoolsThe government is being urged to review the law on the use of mobile phones in schools

The Chairman of the Adentan-Madina-Abokobi wing of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has called on the government to review educational policies such as the use of mobile phones in schools in order to bridge the technology gap and improve literacy in Schools.

Mr. Adinkra stated this while explaining the context of this year’s International Literacy Day theme “Literacy for a human-centered recovery: Narrowing the digital divide” on the Read A Book show.

He said that the educational policies in Ghana do not encompass all the challenges students and teachers face and therefore there is the need to make life better for them.

“We have to review our policies, students in secondary and junior high school students are not permitted to use Mobile phones. Why is that? When you look at electricity at some remote places, it makes some of these policies questionable. This theme is telling us that we have to narrow whatever technological gadgetry or tools to improve literacy. In the process of narrowing, we need to review certain policies so that it doesn’t just look like a policy with no head and tail looking at how far have we gone. Most people even have phones but data is very expensive”.

“You need to buy data, if I live in a very far community buying mobile data becomes difficult for you, electricity is not stable as well. How do we use these phones when there is no light and mobile data. You might have all the gadgets but how do you use them? Do you have the electricity and data as far as education is concerned?”

He commended the government for the one teacher on laptop initiative but questioned the availability of internet data and electricity to these teachers.

“One teacher per laptop is a good initiative but are you giving us data? If it is in my village and there and there is no electricity there, what do I do? I might have access to digital tools to enhance literacy but in our current dispensation, how do I use them. We must regulate how we use every form of technology. It is a step in the right direction which is looking at using technological tools to enhance literacy in Ghana. We need to streamline and bridge the gap between teachers in the rural areas and urban areas” Mr. Adinkra said.

This year’s International Literacy Day celebrated on 8th September each year focused on exploring the opportunities to spread technology-enabled literacy that includes all with key attention on how to position schools post covid-19.

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