KasaTech, an initiative to bridge the language literacy gap in rural Ghana has been launched in Cape Coast at the Kakumdo M/A JHS.
The initiative, birthed by the Boa Daakye Foundation, helps students to learn using tablets to connect remotely with the aid of a RACHEL device to access materials on the internet at zero cost.
Students, with the help of these devices, have access to platforms like Wikipedia as well as special resources uploaded to aid their learning and exploration on a variety of topics in areas such as physics, chemistry, social studies, mathematics as well as languages.
To make learning easier, virtual reality technology is added to study materials where students find themselves in a virtual world interacting with the language under study together with reading, writing and speaking.
The headmistress of the school, Frances Adelaide Hagan expressed appreciation, especially for her school being selected as the first beneficiary. She went on to reiterate how poised the teachers are to implement the project.
On their path, students were ecstatic about the initiative as they had a feel of virtual reality on the day, narrating to a listening audience what they were experiencing.
They expressed readiness to make use of the equipment made available for the study and improvement will be seen when the time for evaluation comes.
Giving more details about the initiative, Kate Wodenya Amenyikor, the President of the foundation explained that “the initiative comes under our Mobile Learning Lab which is providing an opportunity for learners to leverage technology to learn at zero internet cost. In our quest to effectively improve literacy in Ghana, we have partnered with Omari Kaiser Foundation to launch this new project dubbed Kasatech.”
“In the coming years, we are hoping to expand the project to include more students based on how successful this project is run. We are hoping that this will give us insights on successfully implementing”.
The name is a combination of Talk (Kasa) and “Tech” from Technology pointing to the initiative’s combination of language and technology to give education to beneficiaries.
This project will provide an opportunity for our learners to leverage technological devices to learn different languages including English, French, Spanish, Russian, and many others with support from CAMFED and Digital Opportunity Trust and Kaiser Omari Foundation, who are implementing partners.
