THIS RESOURCEFUL TEACHER TAUGHT COMPUTERS USING CHALK AND BLACKBOARD
A lot has changed in the life of Richard Appiah Akoto in the fortnight since he posted photos of
himself on Facebook drawing a Microsoft Word processing window on a blackboard with multi-colored chalk, to teach his students about computers—which the school did not have. The photos went viral on social media and media stories went all around the world.
Akoto, 33, is the information and communication technology (ICT) teacher at Betenase M/A Junior High School in the town of Sekyedomase, about two and half hours drive north of
Ghana’s second city, Kumasi. The school had no computers even though since 2011, 14 and 15-year-olds in Ghana are expected to write and pass a national exam (without which students cannot progress to high school) with ICT being one of the subjects.
The spectacle of Akoto explaining how computers work—without computers, prompted a slew of promises to donate computers to the school. A benefactor at UK’s University of Leeds donated a
brand new laptop and this was followed days later by another donation of five desktop computers for the school and the gift of a laptop for Akoto’s personal use by NIIT, a computer training school headquartered in Accra, the capital of Ghana.
The story of the school and Twitter pressure from prominent players in the African tech space drew a promise from Microsoft to “equip [Akoto] with a device from one of our partners, and
access to our MCE program & free professional development resources on.”
