By Yunus S Saliu
National Center for Arts and Culture (NCAC) in collaboration with the Leverhulme Trust, UK on Tuesday kicked start a daylong orientation with the Gambia history teachers on the use of the West African Senior Secondary School Examination (WASSCE) History E-Book launched in 2018.
The training was held at the National Museum in Independent Drive, Banjul, and brought together dozens of history teachers from different schools across Banjul and the Greater Banjul Area.
The orientation on the use of the WASSCE History E-Book workshop is scheduled to take place in different regions across the country which include National Museum, Banjul, BintangCCF, Bintang; Kankurang Centre, Georgetown, Wassu Stone Circle Site, Wassu.
The WASSCE History E-Book is a free resource that covers the entire syllabus which the students will study to prepare them for their final examinations. The E-Book is good for teachers and students and for other people that are interested in history. The book was co-authored by selected different historians, researchers, and writers from different parts of West Africa, namely Toby Green, Hassoum Ceesay, Achebe Nwado, Joe Alie; Samuel Adu-Gyamfi; Vincent Hiribarren, Ben Kye-Ampadu.
In a brief interview with Prof Toby Green, one of the authors of the WASSCE History E-Book during the training workshop said the book was collectively written by historians from different WASSCE countries which are Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Gambia.
He stated that the History E-Book was funded by ….. Research Council in the United Kingdom and provided free resources which anybody could access especially the students and history teachers covering the main areas of the WASSCE syllabus.
This book, he said, “was launched in 2018 with the WAEC in Banjul and it has a lot of users which is about 700,000. It is quite useful.”
History E-Book which is expected to inspire a new direction in content with new topics and environmental history was started putting together in 2017 “We worked intensively for one year before we launch it in 2018 and then there were series of workshops done in Ghana, Nigeria and we did series of workshops here in The Gambia, too. Now we are trying to introduce it to teachers in the Gambia as many as possibly can across the regions.”
In the future, he said it can be updated but now they want teachers to use it intensively and they can contribute to what to do to improve and update it for new topics to be added.
“The book is copyright-free, anybody can download it for educational use of the students by the teachers too. However, it is user-friendly, it is in pdf, and doesn’t take time to load. Also, if schools can download it too and print some chapters for their students it is a welcome idea, especially in the provinces where it might be difficult for students to access free computers or laptops, free internet, or stable electricity.,” he assured.
However, Prof Green appreciated his colleagues all over, especially in The Gambia for welcoming the project and participating in the writing of the project, and hosting the meeting “where we demonstrated the project to WAEC in 2018.”
Meanwhile, he reminded saying they are doing four workshops in The Gambia this month with the history teachers in different places across the Gambia which include Banjul, Bintang, Janjanbureh, and Wassu
Hassoum Ceesay thanked the teachers for making it up to the workshop despite their busy schedules.
Mr H Ceesay also one of the authors of the History E-Book made presentations at the workshop on visualizing history and covered different areas such as maps, charts and graphs, timelines, tables photographs, drawings, statistics, and history, mode, mean, and median.
