Course-prep: A blended learning platform

JHS1 Students of Glory Kindercare Complex exploring the platform

Last Monday, I was privileged to introduce a blended learning platform -- Course-prep -- to first year students of the Glory Kindercare Learning Complex JHS, in Sunyani.

"Blended learning is the integration of online technology/learning, with the traditional face-to-face class activities, in a planned, pedagogical, valuable manner". - Online Learning Consortium

Features of Course-prep

Randomised Questions and Answers: Questions and answers (MCQs) are randomly displayed to prevent cheating during in-class quizzes.

Multimedia Course Material Supplement: Supplementary course materials such as videos, audios and other e-learning files can be uploaded to augment face-to-face teaching.

Students' Performance Statistics: Review of quiz results by individual students, showing them how they compare to the overall average. 

Available Online, and on-premise: Course-prep can be deployed online for assignments, or deployed locally on a school's LAN for in-class assignments. 

If you'd like to try the free version of Course-prep, kindly submit your request here.
You can also contact via e-mail for inquiry and support.

Screenshot of a Revision quiz question

A student reviews his performance after a practice quiz

A case for 'local' user interfaces?

With a population with more pple not being able to read, y wld u want to intro txt-based mobile apps. How abt pictures?

— Boni okotoshi (@tetekai) October 14, 2013

The tweet above got my attention. Most folks in Ghana still enjoy SMS and those with smartphones enjoy text-based apps like Whatsapp. (Do note that Whatsapp now has voice-enabled input functionality).
From the convo on twitter, one realises that my friend is concerned about folks who cannot read English. I am however of the view that, a great majority of such folks can read in their local tongues.

@tetekai | talking of reading English, abi? B'cos a gr8 no. of GHians read in their local langs o. Imagine txt-based apps in the local langs

— Kafui (@Qaphui) October 14, 2013

@Qaphui i was talking abt english, yes, but i doubt dat a lot of dos can read in a local language

— Boni okotoshi (@tetekai) October 15, 2013

A suggestion for developers who wish to design text-based apps for non-English speakers can be to use an API from Kasahorow. This would afford them the flexibility of using local languages.
However, another cool approach for developers looking forward to implement text-based apps, would be to use voice in place of text.

When it comes to using visuals, a lot of work has to be done to come out with better metaphors. This is because I've been contemplating how User Interface designers (in Ghana -- and Africa) could come up with icons that are 'local' enough to be understood and appreciated by their users.

Is this necessary, though?

What would the icons be like? A basket instead of a shopping cart? An earthenware bowl in place of fork and knife?
Well, as I've stated, more research needs to be done to really get a hang of this. An argument will be that the world is a global village, no? But what of the 'local' folks?

Forgive me if my thoughts are not 'falling in place' now.
I'm an enigma to myself.

Welcome to iWitness -- in Ghana

A couple of months ago, I struck an acquaintance with Daixy, the Social Media coordinator of GhanaDecides -- a BloggingGhana project that seeks to cover issues pertaining to the forthcoming elections in Ghana. I was fascinated after she introduced me to the project as it presented an opportunity for individuals to broadcast the news of Ghana's forthcoming elections to the world.
I thought to myself, "If we are tired of having our country and continent given a negative image in the media by both foreign and local media, who better to set the record straight, than ourselves?"
GhanaDecides became a fixture in my lectures (during breaks) where I educated and advised students to make their voices heard in the campaign known as iRegistered. The iRegistered campaign covered Ghana's first ever biometric voter registration.
Personally, I believe all has gone according to the expectations of the project team based on the responses got. Or maybe not?
That being said, I stumbled upon a project being undertaken by Adaptive Path (a User Experience design company in the USA) that seeks to take social media to another dimension -- iWitness. The free tool iWitness went live a couple od days ago!
iWitness is a pretty cool tool I think would further enhance the GhanaDecides project. It reads tweets (and even Flickr and instagram updates) in real time, based on location and time. It works solely in a browser. All you do is enter a location and a time, and voila, news becomes readily available to you.

Screenshot of the iWitness app. Location: Accra

The downsides of the tool I think has to do mainly with the fact that it's mostly for desktop browsers that are Webkit-based, such as Chrome and Safari. But hey, it's an evolving open source project. It shouldn't be long before we have it being supported on mobile browsers and all other browser as well. Developers can hack at the source code on Github.
iWitness is also advantageous to the GhanaDecides cause as it doesn't require a hashtag (which the campaign so far has depended mainly on) for any particular news.
Just go ahead and try the tool.
I will like to have your thoughts on it via your comments on this post. ;-)
You can read more on iWitness on this blog post by the creators.