17. January 2025 Part 1 – The first video conference between the two partner schools Mawuko Girls Senior High School (Mawuko) in Ho and Carlo-Mierendorff-Schule (CMS) in Frankfurt am Main
Everyone wanted to take part. It is hard to imagine what such a partnership means for our friends in Ho. The school management’s idea was to initiate a broadcast in which as many of the 3,000 pupils and 180 teachers as possible could have taken part. Fortunately, we were able to prevent this, because without ample time for technical and organizational preparation, it seemed a little too risky. Because we had little time and, above all, had to build on existing equipment, it was not possible to set up a technically flawless transmission. Of course we regret that very much. It was incredible what the school’s ICT team around Jareshia Tretu and especially Daniel tried to do to make the video conference possible anyway. Thank you for that! We would also like to take this opportunity to thank our association member and IT expert, Shaun Beason, the technical project manager of our “Students4Students” project at the Caro Mierendorff School. Shaun, thank you very much for your commitment, because without you we would not be able to operate in Ghana the way we can with you 😊. Unfortunately, we cannot even begin to express the enthusiasm on the Ghanaian side. It is unbelievable how patiently everyone put up with the poor quality. Only a fraction of the questions could be answered in the approx. 2 hours. Everyone realized what a contribution such video conferences can make to teaching on both sides. It was striking how open, confident and interested the girls from Mawuko Senior Girls High School were. They want to learn much, much more from the CMS students than was possible in the time available. They can hardly wait to visit Germany and their “new friends”.
The teachers at Mawuko also asked their two colleagues at the CMS questions. It was great how spontaneously the two project coordinators Dörte Netzer and Caro Franz found answers to the most diverse questions. Thank you also for your tireless commitment to this partnership. We are happy to have you with us. Topics such as inclusion, didactic concepts, teaching content, etc. could only be touched on. In the follow-up discussions, it became clear how interested the teachers at Mawuko are in a continuous professional and personal exchange. Many of them dream of visiting a school in another country to gain new ideas for their own work. After the video session, there was not much time left for two important activities. We signed with the principal, Rose C. Nyawuto 5 additions to the existing MOU of December 30, 2019.
At the very end, we had a gift for the school’s ICT department. Based on our experience with the video conference today, we decided to give Jareshia Tretu a computer that would be used exclusively for video conferencing. One reason for the technical difficulties during the video conference was that none of the school-owned laptops were without defects. The microphone didn’t work on one device, the speaker on another and the camera on the third. So Jareshia and Daniel had to improvise to turn three computers into one functioning one. In this respect, too, we are always amazed at the art of improvisation with which people here in Africa react to defects and how they always manage to make a whole out of almost nothing.