Algo Peers Connect: The Transition to Enhanced Learning.

You can’t teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is position them where they can find what they need to know when they need to know it — Seymour Papert.

It is, for this reason, we at Algo Peers held the Connect event to introduce kids to the wide variety of digital education offers. The event, held remotely in a school in Cape Coast aimed to engage the kids and introduce them to Algo Peers. Onboarding for the program was highly engaging and kids were expectant and curious, observing the team and resources around. The welcoming session for the kids engaged them in introductory moments with the team and international collaborators, who had joined virtually to partake in the event. The collaborators connecting with the event served as a vital pivot to the event, as Algo Peers has eyes open for global connections with the international community and forming strong connections.

Mantras were infused into the event, where the team taught the kids a deep-filling mantra that encapsulates the aim of reaching total digital education methods as well as allowing young ones to achieve great success in the future. The mantra was soon followed by storytelling. This had an infusion of Pan- Africanism — the focus of Algo Peers- and Ghanaian folklore revolving around Kweku Ananse, a popular Ghanaian local folklore character. A robotics session followed soon after to climax the storytelling. Here, the kids engaged in educational and fulfilling activity of having to create a spider robot out of simple home accessory gadgets. This is a method employed as part of digital education to get high engagement from students and enable them easily recall what they learn.

The robotics session was soon followed up with a quiz- not a mere quiz but also fun while testing their grasping ability of the story shared — more or less taught. It turned out fruitful and you would notice the kids providing the right answers as well as notice subtle changes in the multiple-choice answers provided to the questions. Other activities such as the display of a hologram were shown to them, leaving them mesmerized.

We will admit however that some challenges were faced amidst the event. Chief among them was internet connectivity, which required having enough internet bundles as well as a strong network connection. Lack of openness to such initiatives such as the event was also felt in some kids, who had become accustomed to the traditional teaching and sitting to listen to lectures or lessons. These are equal challenges faced on a broader table with regards to adopting digital education in our classrooms in Ghana and Africa in general.

Howbeit, you would agree with me that an impact was made at the end of the event. Growing effective self-learning skills, self-motivation, and high engagement were evident in the kids, proving the advantages that digital education will have once incorporated in the classrooms.