Excursion to ‘Design and Technology Institute’
Three is nothing in the world more gratifying to me than to help nurture and watch the youth grow into responsible adulthood and excel in exemplary professional leadership roles.
As I continue to insist in seminars for both teachers and parents, it’s in everybody’s interest to raise the youth for successful lives to serve in responsible positions. The idea is to help the youth learn and yearn to solve the nation’s myriad of problems, including the heart power to take good care of us as we grow old.
It’s with pleasure to share the reflections of a couple of medical students – Joyce Naa Aklerh Okai and Vanessa Nkemayim—after an eye-opening excursion to the Design and Technology Institute (DTI) founded by Constance Swaniker. They are students from a course I teach, “Creative and Critical Thinking” at the Accra College of Medicine (ACM).
From Okai Joyce Naa Aklerh
On a trip to Design and Technology Institute, I was impressed to have entered an institution that has taken recycling to another level. I observed that DTI supported the 3R’s of recycling as a means of protecting the environment: 1. Reuse; 2. Reduce; and 3. Recycle.
In reusing there was zero tolerance for discarding anything as waste, so that reused items are used again to produce other valuable items to save the environment.
In reducing waste, I observed that DTI engaged in activities that prevent waste as much as possible. In terms of recycling, reusable items are used to produce more items of value.
For example, whilst being taken around the premises, I observed some things in the institute as creative. These include an old car tyre transformed into a love bench and garden chairs. It was so exciting seeing this creative art.
Secondly, I observed that there were many statues on the compound and most of these statues were made of plastic water bottles. Amazingly, the environment was just nature bringing into context and informing us that medicine is not just a science but an art, even some help patients to get better by the mere sight of nature.
Welding and fabrication
During our excursion, I also realised that the school had an engineering unit, where welding and fabrication takes place, and it is impressive to note that palm kernel was used as fuel to provide the fire.
They also had an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) lab where basic ideas are translated into design. Further, there was a classroom where students took courses such as Mathematics and English as part of their electives to broaden their knowledge base.
DTI focuses on the principles of ‘Hands On’, ‘Hearts On’, and ‘Heads On’. ‘Hands On’ referred to being action oriented and achieving creativity with whatever one lays their hands on. ‘Hearts On’ has to do driving the passion into what one does; and ‘Heads On’ meaning the power of creative thinking.
Alas, creative thinking is truly the use of the power of our own imagination. As Albert Einstein put it, “Education is not the process of learning facts but training of the mind to think.” And that is what the Design and Technology Institute promotes.
From Vanessa Nkemayim
DTI is a school more on the technical side of education that trains students to use items around us that seemingly have no use, and re-design them to bring out the beauty in them. This was a great opportunity to watch “creativity in full display”.
The students and staff were welcoming, and they showed us around the world they were able to create and the various processes taken to achieve the final products. We also saw the machinery they used to process their material and I could see aspects of creativity each step of the way, such as using coconut husks as a source of heat instead of the regular charcoal.
The two mind blowing arts of creativity I observed were the chairs made from tyres that were old and abandoned and the classrooms made out of shipping containers.
The old used tyres made into a chair was so beautiful. What made it even more fascinating was that the chair was comfortable. I also saw another type of chair that was decorated with abandoned plastic bottles.
In my mind, especially before the excursion and just like many others, I did not think these rejected items could be turned into something so beautiful and fascinating. For me personally, this taught me that sometimes the things we reject the most in life can be made beautiful. But it takes a creative, optimistic and insightful person to have this perspective of renewal.
Technology & medicine
The second thing that I could barely surmise was the classrooms made from containers. This blew my mind, given that I had no idea that a shipping container could be used for any other purpose apart from its generic use. I was challenged once more by the fact that more value can be added to the regular things we find around us.
I was particularly intrigued by the possible overlap between technology and medicine, especially when I project into what the future of medicine would look like. DTI was proof that we young people have potential and if we are guided and given the adequate exposure, we can transform our nation and the continent of Africa.
If we are willing to pay the price in hard work, sacrifice, endurance, we can change the narrative of Africa and the world and reclaim the supreme opportunities we have knowing or unknowingly relegated only to the western world.
I was challenged to go beyond the limits of my imagination and appreciate and advance values such as the quality and accuracy in all I do. These are some of the dedicated values I learned from the students and staff of DTI.