Agrico Hub, a leading a business and digital innovation hub, has hosted the 2024 Bono East Regional’s Ghana Digital Innovation Week.
The event, which aims to encourage learners in the region to showcase their most innovative ideas, took place at the auditorium of the Bonokyempem Hall in the Techiman South Municipality
The two-day event, brought together students, entrepreneurs, and industry experts to share their latest technological advancements and discuss potential collaborations.
Participants had the opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences, network, and gain valuable insights into the world of digital innovation.
Learners from five (5) selected schools in the Bono East Region, also got the opportunity to showcase their prototypes as part of the Students Digital and Innovations Sense Challenge (GDIW S-DISC)
Day one of the celebrations saw learners participating in the Ghana Digital Innovation Week, Students Digital and Innovations Sense Challenge (GDIW S-DISC) 2024 engaging in an intense boot camp session.
The boot camp was designed to equip the learners with the skills and confidence needed for their upcoming pitch session.
The learners as part of the boot camp collaborated with peers from other schools to brainstorm and develop innovative ideas related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
Day two and climax of the celebration, brought together experts in all walks of life to share their experiences and how best their believe digitalization should be approach in the country via panel discussion and short speeches.
The Bono East Regional Coordinator for Second Cycle Institutions and STMI Coordinator, David Mensha Agyamba, explained that, the emergence of social media has really helped to shape education in Ghana.
He however admonished learners on the use of social media saying “it has its merits and demerits.
“This weeks celebration is all about digitalization, digital and innovation of the current trend of educational activities and I think the way to go now, looking at where the world is going is to digitalize our systems, to be so creative and innovative in ideas so that we can also catch up with the developed world.
“Social media in general has got its merits and demerits, in terms of advantages, it has helped students to learn a lot of things online or in the digitalize world and also when they do it too much, it doesn’t help.
“There are some programs on the system when students learns them, it won’t help in their learning, so we have both and bad aspect of it so we are thinking about teaching our students about the good aspects of it so that they will benefit from it and help develop the country and the world at large.
“AI are also good for our learning environment because we need things to be done faster and in perfection. In as much as we are looking for AI’s to be used, we have to also be cautious in using it, because we can’t just sit down and ask AI to do everything for us in our learning activities.
“In general, they are very assistable, when are using them you feel comfortable, you feel very fast and there are a lot of things that will be beneficial to you the user and the people that are around you.” He said
In the same vein, the Coordinator of UEW, Techiman Study Center and Maawerehene of Bouyem Traditional Area, Nana Obiri Korang, in an interview with the media bemoaned how learners are abusing the use of Artificial Intelligence in their studies.
According to him, learners should be educated on the proper use of Artifical Intelligence.
“We believe that in the past years, the government of the day intends to broaden the scope of ICT more or less digitalization in the country and it is helping a lot but I think with AI, a lot of things needs to be done.
“The emergence of Artificial Intelligence is very immanent in our time but there are supposed to be a lot of education for the youth of the day because if we are not careful its will cost our educational system a lot of harm
” As a matter of reality, we have to educate the youth to understand and appreciate the relevance of AI, we can’t do away with it, that is how far we have come and we have to adopt to it, so we have to make sure our students are well vest in digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, because it is going to help help and it serves as a learning aid.
“What is happing here is that most of the people think that instead of using the AI to guide them to learn, the AI should actually learn for them and these are two separate things.” He said
He however urged the powers that be to broaden the scope of internet connectivity in the country to augment learning.
“We have to make sure our schools are revamp with ICT tools and equipment in order to open the scope for the students to have access to ICT, so the government needs to make sure that our schools have access to internet connectivity.
“Those in the hinterlands don’t have access to internet connectivity and that always creates a disparity where those living in the cities will have access to internet and those in the hinterlands will not have access to internet.
“So I think we have to broaden the scope of internet connectivity to those in the hinterlands while ensuring that our students have access to computers and ICT tools to augment their learning.
The participatory schools were Yeji SHS. Kwabre SHS, Tuobodom SHS, Mt. Camel Girls SHS, and NKoranza Technical Institu.
Kwabre SHS emerged as the winners of the Students Digital and Innovations Sense Challenge while Mt. Camel Girls SHS and Yeji SHS were the first and second runner-ups respectively
