Welcome to our weekly blog for Teacher Tapp Ghana!

Every Monday we summarize our most surprising and interesting survey findings from the week before. This weekly blog provides an easy way for you to learn about the experiences and opinions of teachers across Ghana.

Please encourage your colleagues to use the Teacher Tapp app to keep engaged with education even when they’re not teaching. Your responses are also a vital data source that will guide decision-making around best policies and approaches for enhancing the welfare of educators/teachers and ensuring robust educational sector management.

Many more teachers will like to be heard and this can be done through Teacher Tapp. Do share this blog with your colleagues and encourage them to use the download links at the bottom of the page. In the meantime, here are this week’s intriguing findings…

1. Gamification enhances teaching and learning

According to Wikipedia, Gamification is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts. It can also be defined as a set of activities and processes to solve problems by using or applying the characteristics of game elements. Over the years, teaching and learning in the classroom have shifted from the traditional theoretical focus to a more practical and innovative focus. One of such innovations is gamification. Last week, when we asked if gamification in education enhanced teaching and learning, 85% of our respondents answered in the affirmative. This goes to highlight the influence and importance of gamification in our education.

2. Video games have more positive than negative effects on the physical and mental health of students

The topic of video games has always been one that sparks a lot of arguments. It is common knowledge that parents and teachers alike have the perception that video games tend to have a rather negative impact on students than positive. We conducted a survey last week on this topic and were amazed at the results. Contrary to popular belief, 50% of our users, (largely teachers and educators) opined that video games had a more positive effect on the physical and mental health of students. This comes as a very interesting revelation, to say the least. 26% of the respondents had their reservations about video games while 13% remained neutral on the matter. Nevertheless, it is encouraging to know that more people are beginning to appreciate the positive outlook of video games. 

3. Puzzle games make a great substitute for pedagogical games

Pedagogical games simply refer to game-based learning. That is, any game that contains elements or contents that are useful for teaching and learning. In as much as game-based learning is becoming a modern technique, some teachers or schools may not have the necessary IT equipment or even find the right games that facilitate the subject matter or topic being taught in the class. In view of this, we conducted a survey to find out what other games would make great substitutes for pedagogical ones. Per our survey, we realized that puzzle games were a great substitute for pedagogical games. Other games such as role-playing games, strategy games, simulation games, and sports could serve a similar purpose. We will encourage all teachers to adopt a gaming module that will help enhance teaching and learning in their various areas of interest.

4. Finally, we know you’re finding our daily readings useful, so here are some of the tips we gathered from last week…

How to encourage our students amidst their mistakes to do more.

how teachers can learn together.

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