In commemoration of the 2021 Africa Code Week (ACW) celebration across the African continent, the Liberia Chapter of ACW has concluded a day-long train the trainers (TTT) session on the importance of teachers acquiring knowledge in digital learning and curriculum, which was recently held in Monrovia at AGC High School in Fiamah, Sinkor.
According to ACW-Liberia, the Africa Code Week is an initiative that is gear towards sustainable growth in Africa, with the aimed of changing the stories of hundreds of schools, teachers, governments and non-for-profit institutions, in getting together to bridge the digital and gender skills gap on the African continent.
The ACW training was successful in achieving its goal as the event brought together forty (40) teachers, male and female, from over fifteen (15) schools to participate and as well benefit from the TTT session.
All of the fifteen (15) teachers who participated in the day-long interactive session were certificated at the end of the training.
Serving as one of the presenters at the workshop Africa Code Week Ambassador was Peterking Quaye, who spoke on the significance of digital skills. Quaye asserted that the goal of the Africa Code Week is to empower the younger generation by providing them with teaching and coding skills in order for them to flourish in the 21st century.
According to him, since 2015 the System Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP) ACW has offered free opportunities for young Africans to learn to code skills and for teachers to be trained on digital learning curriculum.
He said, with the level of interest emerging from the teachers as well as the general feedback received so far from participants during the various sessions, the Africa Code Week Liberia Chapter has taken into consideration the different views in order to improve on the next session.
The ACW Ambassador noted that some recommendations received from the experiences with students who participated in the training observed that most local schools do not have a functional computer lab for its students and teachers.
Accordingly, the lack of computer lab at various institutions of learning in the country is a very serious setback to the improvement of the initiative, which is being sponsored by SAP and other partners.
One of the recommendations indicated that, in order to solve some of those problems, it is anticipated that since ACW will not be able to provide each of those schools with their own lab, they should lobby with their partners to get them the needed equipment to set up a functional ICT Lab that will serve as the central venue for all Africa Code Week workshops in the country.
In another development, the Liberia edition of the annual Africa Code Week -Code Challenge 2021 celebration targeted deeper awareness on coding education and the code challenge projects for students in schools, with over 800 students and about 40 teachers in primary schools and universities benefiting from the initiative so far. Three winners have emerged and will be presented their certificates and prizes at a special winner award ceremony, to be held in November 2021.