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Week 2 in Review

This past week was particularly intense and busy. On Monday, we spent the day at a local private/boarding school which was hosting an ICT bootcamp for principals of one of the townships. The sessions were run by Edunova, our partners, over the two-day bootcamp period. We were asked to provide a session about sustainability of an ICT implementation plan over the long-term. On Tuesday, we began our four days of sessions for ICT facilitators of Khanya and Edunova (a Western Cape province-wide event). These are the facilitators that are assigned multiple schools and provide the ICT training and support for the educators in the schools of the townships. With about 60 or so facilitators present, each with a minimum of four schools, some with 35 schools (!) for whom they are responsible, we were potentially reaching a huge number of teachers. Many facilitators traveled from large distances in order to attend this event.

Throughout the week, we experienced no end of technical difficulties - Internet connections that would inexplicably slow down or die altogether, mysterious power outages, server errors, browsers and java that had not been updated enough to support the web-based tools, and so on. I experienced more tech difficulties this past week than possibly in my lifetime! The frustrating thing was knowing that the hardware itself was certainly robust to support what we were asking, but that it was mostly human error that was responsible in some way (by not updating or by putting too many barriers into a system to provide easy workarounds!).

The TWBC team managed to pull off a world-class set of sessions in these conditions nonetheless - with dignity and grace! Whenever we encountered a technical difficulty (at times merely within minutes of each other), we carried on without batting an eyelash and would either move on to something else or persevere in the existing conditions. One was left with the feeling that these kinds of tech difficulties were part of the everyday fabric of life in this part of the world.

Here is a breakdown of the schedule of sessions we offered:

Tues. AM - 2.5 hours of Emerging Technologies- newest and cutting edge stuff for classrooms (within scope of possibilities) - Made more challenging by computer lab constraints and power outages.

Tues. PM - Social Networking for Continuing Professional Development and classroom learning and Professional Learning Networks - how to create self-driven CPD through online resources and establishing contact with global educators. We set up a ning for the ICT facilitators to use for collaboration and sharing of resources. They loved it! Very positive feedback.

Wednes. AM - Building ICT Vision - Whole-school planning; Building an ICT plan with partnership from various community stakeholders (very well received)

Wednes PM - Modeling ICT  integration - solid models/ideas/lesson plans of seamless integration of ICT tools and environments and where to find more (The facilitators marveled at how difficult it was to create lesson and unit plans and think through how to naturally embed ICT tools to support this - many examples were created by them that they could carry away with them to share with their teachers).

Thursday AM - Presentation of Google Apps for Education - Where Sharon discovers that IE6 does not support google docs (!!). Lots of technical difficulties, but we persevered and wowed the facilitators with the possibilities of google docs and other google apps.

Thursday PM - Practical considerations of using ICT with students — Classroom Management in the Computer Lab, basic troubleshooting, and contingency planning. We also offered a session on how laptops for teachers can be used practically in the classroom (1 laptop) to support learning

Friday AM - Choice of a session about SmartBoards (and the Wiimote Board) or training in Moodle

Throughout the week, we took advantage of the ning environment and asked the facilitators to respond to questions in the discussion forums and to blog their reflections on their learning. Very powerful!

Some of the resources we shared in the ning:

Edublogs worth reading:

e4africa
School 2.0 in SA (Maggie Verster)
Zac’s blog
Sharon’s blog
Practical Theory (Chris Lehmann)
Open Thinking (Alec Couros)
Angela Maiers blog

Educational blogging platforms (free!)

21Classes
Edublogs
Class blogmeister

Open Source Blog software (to be put on a server or school server)

WordPress
Buddy Press

Visualizing Tools

Mindmeister (concept mapping)
Wordle
Gap Minder
ManyEyes

Educational Webcasting

Edtech Talk

Ning Communities

Classroom20
Interactive Whiteboard Revolution
Global Collaborative Ning
Smartboard

Open Source Software Alternatives

Of course, all of this makes it sound as if the organization of the week-long event was flawless and well-managed. Not so. I have discovered that three cross-cultural organizations attempting to work in partnership can be fraught with many difficulties. Communication breakdowns, confusion about leadership and ownership, heavy-handed decision-making…. all of these issues were very much apparent throughout the week. Honestly, there were moments when I just wanted to give up on the notion of philanthropic organizations working in developing nations. I have learned the hard way that there will be those who will not appreciate the sacrifices made by TWBC team members and will ask for more, more, more. A certain part of me has had to become hard-edged. Learning who and when to trust has become an issue that I have had to wrestle with quite a lot in the past week. Some of my core beliefs about aid in a developing nation have been challenged - some even shattered. It is difficult to balance these struggles with a reminder of the successes of the past two weeks and the overall goals of our organization - to work shoulder-to-shoulder with teachers in challenging situations for the goal of mutual empowerment.

Four more weeks to go….

“Live-blogging” in Townships Workshops - Day 1

No, not really!

Noble is beginning our workshops by sending SMS messages through skype to the mobile phones of the workshop sessions as a kickoff to the week of workshops.

Today, we start low-tech for our first session by using sticky notes to first identify why we are here, what learning gaps exist in the system, how ICT can be used promote learning, and what barriers exist to using ICT in the system. We are hoping to kick off some lively group discussions as we share our impressions and experiences.

The first session went well and we collected the ideas in order to build a wordle which we will later show them at the end of the day.

Zac Chase was a terrific host and leader of the first session using humour and anecdotes effectively as we warmed up to the educators who were with us.

The next session will have the participants divided into two groups, One group will be in the computer lab and asked to take a technology skills audit (a survey on an excel spreadsheet). They are also given a 2 GB flash drive (generously donated by P from ISTE’s NECC last week!) where we have placed OSS formatted by LiberKey.

We go through basic file management skills with the educators as we model how to use a computer lab effectively

The other group is examining the shift in pedagogy from traditional to digital practices for using ICT and discussing how this fits in to their current practices.

In the afternoon, we broke into two groups and used a second venue with a computer lab so all the participants could have hands-on access to computers. First we had educators create a table using Word (a new skill for most of them) so that they could use it to create a lesson plan. Then we showed them how to create a gmail account - which failed mostly because gmail refused to permit so many new accounts from teh same IP address.

Now tonight, a LONG planning meeting for more to come tomorrow. Boy, will I be tired tomorrow as I attempt to lead two workshops about information literacy, Internet search skills and how to use PowerPoint effectively for teaching and learning.

Cross-posted from the TWB Canada Ning:

The suitcases are unpacked, the souvenirs mostly distributed, the jet lag has almost worn off, and the photos are slowly been sifted.

Fortunately, I had a few days to catch my breath and slowly digest the experiences, conversations, and encounters of the past 7 weeks. There is a part of me that doesn’t want to start letting go of it. My dreams every night are filled with African faces and African landscapes.

Practically speaking, though, it is time to move to the next stage. Maybe for me the raw emotions generated from the trip are still too close to the surface, because I am finding it difficult to focus on what is the “what’s next?”.

I am starting to make lists of what to do and who to contact. This next stage is very likely a critical one as we seek to maintain contact and further develop relationships with teachers in Africa and supporters of Teachers Without Borders.

Any thoughts, comments, or advice would be most welcome!

I have mentioned to many of my friends in the last two or so weeks my exciting news! I am accepting an invitation to accompany Noble Kelly (prez of TWB Canada) and some others with Teachers Without Borders to South Africa for a few weeks this summer.

This morning, I had the great privilege of skype conferencing with two teachers and an advocate in South Africa along with Noble (who was in Vancouver). It was quite exciting to hear their passion and excitement about some changes happening in their school in Fezeka (a school that has been given support through Education Without Borders in Vancouver), in the townships of Cape Town.

They are in a most challenging situation. I want to share with you part of an email one of their advocates sent me this morning to describe the conditions there.

Teachers at Fezeka in Gugulethu township just outside Cape Town tell me that:

A- Of the 1150 students at the Senior Secondary school this year, some 70% of the students are from single parent families

B- Average unemployment in RSA townships is of the order of 44%

C- The teachers usually play the role of :
1 Social worker
2 policeman
3 nutritionist
4 nurse
5 councillor, Only then are they able to get on with their true teaching Role.

Life Skills orientation is taught instead of the older Careers counceling.
The issue is that the teachers are out of touch with the ever changing needs of commerce and industry.
Township schools are still deprived in many ways due to the legacy of apartheid.

We try and practice a policy of “Hand up not Hand out”.

Family sizes are still very large in township rural black communities with 5.5 children not being unusual among the less educated.
Of the 50 million South Africans, we have approximately 10 million illiterate people, So here one can already see the link between high unemployment and the illiteracy rates.

When school finishes at 2.00pm the children are often on the streets so that they are influenced by all the negative role models of gangsterism to the issues of violence, alcoholism, drugs and sex.

We have a large job to do over the next 5 years if we are not to let the bad influences succeed in taking over from the good!

Expectations are high and service delivery by many government departments has been shoddy to say the least. So this results in much frustration especially on the part of the township inhabitants.

My source for this information also pointed out that no provision by the government has been made for after-school activities that might spare the students from seeking out the negative lifestyle choices (gangs, drugs, etc.). He also mentioned that the incidents of rape of the young women are very high.

There are many who want Fezeka school (today the teachers I spoke with were teachers there) who are passionate to create a different future for their school.

The Fezeka school choir has already attained international recognition for its choir; now they want to provide support and professional development for their teachers so they can use the two computer labs they have onsite in the school.

Today we discussed the possibility of setting up mentoring relationships between teachers abroad and teachers in South Africa and creating partnerships between classes of students.

(If you are interested in partnering with a class in South Africa for grades 10-12, almost all subject areas, please let me know!).

I have an ambitious vision about creating a system to bring together teachers for mentoring relationships - more on that as the plan crystallizes!

Please enjoy the youtube video which shows the dedication of the teachers and students at Fezeka!