Oppia’s First Visit to Ghana: Guest Post by James
This post was guest written by one of our dedicated volunteers and Google Summer of Code (GSoC) students, James John. In early October, James had the opportunity to visit a group of teachers in Ghana to lead a 2-day seminar to teach the community leaders how they could leverage Oppia in the future. This post is James’s recollection of the events that happened in Ghana. Enjoy!
We all get the opportunity to do great things in life. For me, great things mean building things. There isn’t anything greater than seeing people love and use what you built.
My name is James and I have been a student in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the prestigious University of Uyo, Uyo, Nigeria for about 4 years now. Around the time I began my studies, I delved into the path of building software and participated in the Google Summer of Code (GSOC) program, which is a program focused on bringing student developers into open source software development. I worked with the Oppia Foundation where I worked on serving Oppia’s pages statically. Details of the project can be found here.
Shortly after the end of the program, I got an email from Sean — one of the admins for Oppia foundation — asking if I would like to go to Ghana to help start Oppia there.
Crazy right? Like how? Why? What do I know? What am I going to say? Amongst all the things I could’ve imagined, it had never crossed my mind that I would leave Nigeria any time soon. I had never even been to an airport before! I immediately replied to Sean saying I’d love to go.
Arriving in Ghana
My work in Ghana was to introduce the volunteers at a school to the platform, get their feedback, and conduct student trials to see how we can improve the platform to serve Ghanaians better. After a month-long preparation, I was ready to leave.
It was a long journey — after flying into Accra (the capital city of Ghana), I then took a 4-hour bus journey to a city called Ho (north-east of Accra). When I arrived at Ho, I met with Rev. Bankas, the leader of the Oppia Ghana community. I was supposed to sleep after being tired from the long journey, but no, I decided to continue preparing for the talk the next day. I had no idea what to expect, so I didn’t hope for anything. I only prayed not to make mistakes while talking.
Day 1:
The next morning, we arrived at McColins Preparatory School.
After a warm welcome, we headed straight down the hallway to the computer lab where 3 volunteers were already seated and waiting for us. Rev Bankas introduced me to the volunteers as a volunteer from Nigeria. He talked about how I left Nigeria to help start Oppia in Ghana. I listened attentively and prayed in my heart for the network to be working as all I had to say was on my Google Drive online. I realized I was the youngest person in the room. I was almost scared, but I’ve taught JavaScript in a class where the students were almost twice my age. Remembering that experience kept me going.
When I got to the stage, I talked briefly about myself and how I got to know about Oppia. I talked about Oppia’s goals and audience, the team of developers, and my work during the Google Summer of Code program. I talked about why we’ve brought Oppia down to Ghana. As I was talking, it dawned on me that I could use the development version of Oppia which I have on my laptop. Without the audience noticing, I quickly started my development server and then used it in explaining my talk. I almost didn’t need the network connection anymore, since I was able to get things working locally, but towards the end of my talk, the network was fixed and working.
I wanted the volunteers to experience the Oppia platform directly, so we went through a fractions lesson online. While going through the lessons, we purposefully gave wrong responses to some questions to see what sort of feedback Oppia would give. I tried to make them focus on the way Oppia responds, but they were really enjoying the story behind the lesson.
The delight and satisfaction on the faces of the volunteers were priceless.
I got feedback from the volunteers and told them to continue exploring the platform. Soon we had to wrap up, so I asked more questions and got more feedback from the volunteers. Rev. Bankas closed the day with some talks about Oppia and why it should be taken seriously.
The day was more successful than I expected, the teachers were really happy and ready to show the students how to use Oppia. I got back to my hotel room filled with the joy of success, despite things not having started out well.
Day 2:
The next day we had sessions with the students. I walked around taking pictures and capturing the reactions of the students while going through the lessons. Some were really serious about the lessons, some were smiling as they went through the lessons with their volunteers.
After a student was done with a lesson, I went to them, discussed with them about the lesson they took and asked about their experiences as they used the platform. I also got feedback about the type of lessons they would love to learn on Oppia and promised that we would work on getting those lessons available for them as soon as we can.
After the feedback time, and when all the students were done with the lessons, I organized a question and answers session with the students. It was sort of a game but was more on questions about it, and general stuff I think they should know about.
After the students left, Rev. Bankas had a long meeting with the volunteers. They discussed the continuity of Oppia in Ghana, and how they would have periodic meetings to continue using Oppia in schools. At the end of the day, we went to the office of the administrator to give him our farewell. He thanked us for bringing Oppia to his school and asked about our plans to continue using Oppia. With that, I left McColins preparatory school.
In the end,I left Ghana happy, and proud, not just because I travelled out of Nigeria for the first time, but I got to see people use something I worked on, and they were happy while using it.
Note: Since James’s visit, the group of teachers in Ghana have since begun the process of establishing their own Oppia Advocacy Group — which will establish and run a resource center so that students and teachers throughout Ghana can learn more about Oppia. Thanks James for all of your hard work in helping to kickstart these efforts!
Join the Oppia community today!
Oppia’s lessons and platform are built by volunteers from around the world. Join the team to improve access to education around the globe. You can learn more about our learning platform, Oppia, by visiting https://www.oppia.org/or get a flavor of the Oppia lessons by visiting our lesson library herehttps://www.oppia.org/library. Those interested in volunteering can reach out to us at https://oppiafoundation.org/volunteer.
