/ 2 December 2008

Digital age dawns in classrooms

The hawksbill turtle was one of the hottest attractions at Hong Kong’s Asia World Expo Centre (AWE) which, a week ago, resembled a Sunday marketplace.

Standing next to her stall, Marie-May Iman, a teacher at Plaisance Secondary School on the island of Seychelles, was gesturing at a huge poster depicting the innocent-looking ocean creature.

But on the day she was not the only one with a special pitch. Fong Yin Kuan, a teacher at Beacon Primary School in Singapore, was sharing her insights about her project, which involves seven-year-olds in the area of reading and writing.

And just behind Kuan, Sarietjie Musgrave, one of four South Africans in the AWE, had set up her home away from home for the next three days.

What Iman, Kuan and Musgrave have in common is, in essence, their ability to adapt. When information and communication technologies began reshaping our world, they opened their classroom doors and invited a new set of learning and teaching tools inside.

Moreover, these teachers have been using these technologies in such pioneering ways in their own countries that they were hand-picked to join 260 of their peers from 64 countries to share their groundbreaking methodologies on a global platform.

Now in its fourth year, the Innovative Teachers Forum awards are divided into four categories: innovation in collaboration, innovation in community, innovation in content and educators’ choice.

Reza Bardien, education lead at Microsoft SA, says the awards are a recognition that technology is increasingly being used by teachers to eliminate the boundaries of where and when learning happens, while building a safe environment where learners develop as creative and critical thinkers.

”At the heart of the forum is the belief that teachers from all over the world are transforming education and using innovative learning methods to empower their students and prepare them for the 21st century,” added Ralph Young from Microsoft.

Teachers agree. Thamsanqa Makhathini, a teacher at Mphophomeni High School, near Howick in KwaZulu-Natal, who participated in Hong Kong, said his learners’ most frequently used IT tool was the cellphone. This is a sure way to engage them in the learning process.

”The beauty about ICT [information and communication technologies] is that it improves learner participation, teachers get immediate response, there is greater teacher-learner interaction and engagement and it also saves time,” said Makhathini.

But judging by the projects on display, teachers seem to agree that technology should be used as a tool to mediate and deliver curricula and not as an end in itself.

Therefore Iman’s hawksbill project was about exposing learners to ICT- and internet-based research methods to study the behaviour and migration patterns of the turtle.

Once they collected the data, they presented their findings and proposals using computer programs like Powerpoint, Photoshop and Publisher, a desktop-publishing programme.

Similarly, Kuan’s digital story-telling project showed how learners, aged between six and seven, each have a laptop and in groups write and edit their own stories. They’re able to read thanks to recording instruments peer-evaluate one another through reflections, reviews and analysis using Windows Media Player.

Musgrave’s project, Spread the Sunshine, highlights the plight of the disabled and also uses ICT as a tool. Learners from Eunice High in Bloemfontein, where Musgrave teaches, were deployed to carry out interviews and use their findings to see what impact computers could have on the lives of the handicapped.

This project impressed the judges, earning Musgrave a second place in the worldwide category of innovation in the community.

Although Microsoft Office – and its many applications – was used through the various phases of the project, the real innovation of the project was that the learners could choose any computer hardware or software that would have a positive impact for the disabled person they helped. This way, they not only learned to use technology, but enhanced key skills like the ability to find, collect, analyse and critically evaluate data; organise and process information in various formats; and present and communicate information.

Despite coming from different worlds – developed, underdeveloped and developing – the teachers’ gathering in Hong Kong provided a glimpse of how technology has started to transform the classrooms and how traditional teaching practices are being reconfigured so teachers and learners can interact more meaningfully.

While in the past pre-technology teachers boasted having overhead projectors and slides, teachers and learners of today reel off words like Microsoft Windows Moviemaker, camcorders and Photoshop.

With a moviemaker they can effortlessly create movies and sophisticated slide shows complete with titles, effects, music and even narration. And with a camcorder – a combination of video camera and recorder – they can record lessons or projects continually and also generate signals for displays. The possibilities are endless.

Similarly, SMSes and e-mail have also become the most cost-effective and popular means of communication and most teachers are capitalising on the former because most learners have access to cellphones.

Digital divide or not, the Innovative Teachers Forum has also highlighted that being cutting-edge is not a privilege limited to the teachers of richer countries. Teachers from Africa held their own alongside their counterparts from New Zealand, Poland, France, China and Germany.

One of the judges, Eric Yankah from Ghana, highlighted this: ”Africa made an impressive showing and the quality of projects was really inspiring. I think that Africa has demonstrated to this forum that we have the capacity to surprise the world.”

In addition to Musgrave’s achievement, other Africans who did well were Ronald Ddungu from Uganda, who came second in the innovation in collaboration category, and Ousmane Diouf from Senegal, who won the innovation in content section with his ”electric man project”.

The other two South Africans who took part in the event were Peter de Lisle, based at Hilton College in Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal, and Jacqueline Batchelor from Cornwall Hill College in Centurion, Gauteng.