Google Faculty Development Workshop -- Day 3

Did Google save the best for last? I don't think so because all the days have been great.
The final day saw participants taken through Google Apps for Education: Calender, Gmail, Google docs. A hands on session on Google+ was also held and that had a lot of engagement as the interaction between the presenter and participants was great.
Baris, a software engineer at Google also had a cool session where he took participants through a typical software design approach used by Googlers. Participants finally decided to build an app to help solve traffic problems in Accra and indeed, in Ghana.
Another brainstorming session was held after the programm when a numberof folks stayed behind for about fifteen minutes after closure, to talk with Baris about malaria and help him understand issues on the ground so as to be well informed to build an infrastructure that can mitigate the harm caused by mosquitoes, and prevent them from 'invading' the rooms of their 'potential victims'.

Baris with some participants discussing malaria

It was a great event and the knowledge base has been really dense.
I do hope to be here next year, and fully help advance the mission of Google in making technology an integral part in education.
Related articles:

• Google Faculty Development Workshop -- Day 2
• Google Faculty Development Workshop -- Day 1

Politics of traffic & street lights?

        So I have been living in the Sunyani Municipality (of Ghana's Brong-Ahafo Region) for the past 6 years -- and counting. It is a lovely town I must confess, well-planned and a far cry from the country's capital, Accra, in terms of congestion. The region is known as the 'breadbasket of Ghana'.
        One would have thought that the first-class streets, adorned with streetlights and traffic lights, would not just serve as monuments -- as the case is now. More often than not, these streetlights fail to function, and they can be off for over a fortnight with no one (especially the metropolitan assembly) attending to them. You only see the streetlights working again after a lot of 'noise' has been made on the FM Stations.
        Quite recently, we began having traffic wardens (police) directing traffic whenever the traffic lights go off -- which is commendable -- but doesn't solve the problem.
        However, an incident I saw a couple of days ago worried me greatly.
        It was about eight minutes to six in the evening and the traffic was really heavy. Drivers were tooting their horns at one another -- in short, it was chaotic. I wondered where the warden was (as were the other passengers), only to see him at a distance -- on phone! His countenance was one of an individual oblivious to his immediate surroundings.
       But he is not to blamed entirely. What are our leaders doing about such mishaps in our communities? Next to nothing, if you ask me. They spend copious amounts of time on the airwaves talking politics! Discussing issues that are so trivial (sometimes) that, they need not over-hype them.
      Someone calls another a palm-wine tapper -- and so what?
      Another calls his opponent 'kokoase kurasini' (a villager from a cocoa-farming community) -- and so what?
We really need to up our game and stop this 'disgusting' approach to addressing societal issues.

Drivers doing their own thing -- Chaos!

Find your own way?