The first round of winners of Microsoft South Africa’s 2010 Innovative Teachers’ Forum Awards (ITFA) was announced at an awards ceremony held at the Sci-Bono Discovery Centre in Newtown, Johannesburg, recently.
They were Linda Bradfield (St John’s College, Johannesburg), Chris Gantsi (General Smuts High, Vereeniging), Warren Sparrow (Rondebosch Boys Preparatory School, Cape Town), Peter de Lisle (Hilton College, outside Pietermaritzburg) and a group of teachers from Bloemfontein schools.
The winners will participate in the Pan African finals in Mombasa. Winners of the finals will then compete against 500 teachers from around the world in a grand finale scheduled for October in Cape Town.
According to the organisers, the winning entries impressed the judges because, “not only do they demonstrate the transformational value of technology but they also show how the broader community could benefit from such projects”.
Each entrant had to submit a project involving learners in a creative way of delivering the curriculum. In the process, learners acquired critical IT skills. The awards review teachers’ entries in four critical areas of innovation: content, community, collaboration and challenging contexts. There is also a special peer review prize which is awarded after the finalists have voted for their favourite project.
The awards have the backing of the department of basic education, which views technology as a critical tool to empower learners and teachers to adapt to the global technological world.
Bradfield won in the Innovation in Collaboration category. Her “trash to treasure” project saw six- and seven-year-old boys working together to collect eight tonnes of waste in six weeks. It was sorted, weighed and sold to recycling companies or donated to informal recyclers. They created a wiki and several e-books related to the subject.
Gantsi won in the Innovation in Community category with his “zero tolerance for bribery” campaign. Learners produced a media campaign, published articles on a website and produced a DVD to raise community awareness on the effects of bribery and how to stop it.
Sparrow scooped the Innovation in Content award. His project, “Who wants to be a millionaire?” involved grade-four children who learnt about economic management sciences and entrepreneurship by designing board games and creating videos. Learners used a variety of technology resources, online surveys and blogs as well as wikis.
A group of teachers from different schools in Bloemfontein won in the Innovation in Challenging Contexts category for their “Children who care” project. They are Sunia Dokter from Dr Blok High School, Shireen Persens from Heatherdale High School, Ngaka Ralekoala from St Bernard’s High School and Lehentse Seekoei from Lereko Secondary School.
For the past 18 months, the teachers have worked collectively to train learners in ethics and research methodology and learners conducted research in their local community to determine the needs of vulnerable children.
The Special Judges’ Award went to De Lisle for his “Biodiversity: creatures and contexts” project which celebrates the International Year of Biodiversity. Learners used different thinking and research tools to gain a basic understanding of biomes and creatively used tools to create a biome as a context for a computer game and to design a suitably adapted creature to live in it.
Rae Gagiano from Eunice High School in Bloemfontein got the nod from the finalists as their Peer Award choice for her project, “Paying it forward”. Learners attended workshops to attain new skills and then put them to work by creating books for abandoned babies and creating movies for terminally ill orphans in the community.