What I am most excited about right now is virtual reality. Taste the words. V-i-r-t-u-a-l  r-e-a-l-i-t-y. Even VR for short has something! Together with alumni Jonathan Dotse and Kabiru Seidu and their company Nubian VR, and colleagues at Ashesi, I am running a project on bringing VR into the classrooms! So exciting!

We recently brought students, staff and faculty together to try it out! I said:

 “I think Ashesi will in the next year use VR in a host of courses like French, Design and Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Written and Oral Communication and Text and Meaning. We can have morning class by the Eiffel tower in Paris, travel in a blood vessel through the body in the second period, fly after lunch, deal with an ethical dilemma in 360 degrees, and experience expressionist art in the world’s top museums or go to a refugee camp before the day is over. A challenge is that the sector is new, and content is still scarce. Hence we will also produce educational content for virtual reality.”

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All you need these days to have an immersive or virtual reality experience is

• a smartphone with a gyroscope (can your display image rotate?)
• a VR smartphone stereoscopic holder of some sort. Our project uses a mid-range Google Cardboard. There is also the more expensive Gear VR or the $15 Cardboard box.
• VR apps for your phone, for instance Google Cardboard, Vrse, in360tube, Other Space.

This new revolutionary technology that came out of Oculus Rift’s crowd funding campaign which created a consumer base for VR and the Google I/O conference in 2014 which paired the smartphone with a cheap shell to lower costs and popularize VR. Oculus Rift was bought by Facebook in 2014 for 2 billion USD.

If you are interested to know more, listen to podcast Voices of VR, read the Wikipedia article on Virtual Reality, if in Ghana join VR-GH, and if at Ashesi, do come for our next session on April 20^th in Lab 222!

On Monday 4^th April, 2016 I went to the driver’s and vehicle licensing authority (DVLA) in my hometown of Tema. I had taken the day off (well, student papers waiting to be graded were in my bag) and I was prepared for a full day of Ghanaian administrative duty to replace my soon-to-be-expired license from 2008. I left with the same old license and some experiences I wanted to share with you!

When I came there I was met the usual chaos of people everywhere, connection people leading the way between rooms marked unhelpfully  “Room 7” and the like. The new thing was a loud speaker that by the gate broadcast a message to visitors to not entrust our business with any connection men or “guru” boys. The irony!

However, I had made up my mind to see exactly how long it would take to weave thru on my own. I soon realized that most people sitting and standing waiting were not in any of my queues. After having copied my driver’s license off site, brought it for signature in one office, gotten a fee determined in the banking hall, (no fees are posted for people to see, “all fees are individual, you understand?” explained the clerk), gone to pay GHS 64 in the banking hall, gone back to the first office for another signature, gone to “Room 7” to check my eyes, and after having spent only about an hour on the premises, I was sent to room 10.

Room 10 was empty except for a lady who, scribbling on my forms, was telling me that the “capture machine” was broken and I should please call back another day to see when it was fixed. I said that was unacceptable and that I had taken the day off as my license was about to expire. She sighed and said I can use my application for a new license if stopped by police. I asked to see the manager.

I was then shown to Mr. Lamptey’s office. A row of young men was waiting outside his door with the notice “no slippers allowed” on it, inside Mr. Lamptey was busy querying people with shoes on about their road sign skills and I waited for him to round up. I explained I had some complaints.

He was quite open to hearing me out, or well, he did ask me first to “go to DVLA in Accra” and then he asked his coworker to “show me” some different things I said were lacking, but when I persisted he listened to me and when I was done asked me to write down my complaints and I did.

Back outside, I met a former colleague and also Joe (in photo above) who both had been called in as their replaced licenses from one and two years ago supposedly were in. Actually it seemed most of the crowd there was waiting for their license. This after two major scandals in DVLA in the Ghanaian news recently: in November a deal where the procurement of licenses was discovered to be severely inflated was discovered, in 2014 investigative journalist Anas revealed that licenses could be bought outright. True to character, Anas managed to buy a driver’s license for a blind person!

On my way home I decided to pass by a friend, Jacob who owns a workshop not far from DVLA. When telling him about my day, he showed me his temporary license that had been renewed four (4) times since 2014!

What is interesting to me is not just the already well documented breakdown of DVLA, but also the complacency or apathy of fellow license holders, people who pay a connection man extra, people who spend several working days every two years at DVLA, or come to the premises only to wait again for a license that has been delayed for years. Ghanaians who might have lost a dear one in a preventable traffic accident. My complaint seemed to be a funny curiosity to Mr. Lamptey.

With that, will things at DVLA ever change? 

[Update: Course postponed for May 19th! ]

On Friday, 15 April, 2016 I will be teaching a one day course on how to write for the web. I guess my background as a blogger for 10 years, as the chair of BloggingGhana for 8 years, and as a communications lecturer for 7 years  prepared me well, but it was still an interesting task to think through actually teaching this!

The course is organised by PenPlusBytes, costs GHS 400, runs from 9 am-1.30 pm and deals with the following topics:

•    Harnessing the promise of social media for individuals, organizations and businesses.
•    How to create an online identity
•    Planning your web content more effectively
•    Writing emails that get responses
•    Writing for various online platforms
•    Balancing being a private and public person on social media

What is your top Writing for the Web tip?

Photos of me talking, tweeting and preaching blogging from BloggingGhana and Reconnect Ghana.