Owura Kwadwo Hottish, a teacher from Ghana, drew the entire interface of MS Word on the blackboard to teach the software to his students since they lacked the required resources. Hottish is a computer teacher at the Betenase M-A Junior High School in Ghana’s Sekyedomase town. Despite the lack of resources, this teacher did not stop from going beyond limits to teach the subject to his pupils. Last month, a Facebook post by Hottish on the same went viral and not only did it garner a lot of likes and comments but also started to bring forward a change.
After the post went viral, an Indian company sent computers to the children of this school as a measure of assistance to help them learn the subject better. The company, NIIT Ghana, is an offshore wing of the Indian firm. It applauded the excellent work done by Hottish and decided to help him by donating five computers, one laptop and ICT textbooks to the students of the school. This act by the company is a perfect example of the power of social media and reaffirms our faith in the good side of the internet.
NIIT Ghana went on to share the good news on its Facebook handle, saying that the area’s District Chief Executive had promised to set up an ICT centre along with computers to help the entire community. The company also gifted a laptop to Hottish as a recognition of his hard work and serious efforts in teaching computers to the students. In addition to this, Hottish was provided with a free IT training to take place at NIIT Kumasi. Yaw Amoateng, Director of NIIT Ghana, along with Sanjeev Mishra, Senior Manager of NIIT Kumasi handed over the computers to the Municipal Chief Executive and officials of the Municipal Education Directorate of Ghana.
Such stories of teachers going beyond their limits for their students, be it a professor’s efforts to help a single mom by carrying her child on his lap or Hottish’s serious attempt to teach his students, continue to inspire us in a million ways.