I am a
PhD student at the University College in London. I have lived and worked in
South Africa for seven years. I am on my way to Mvuzo Junior Secondary, a
school in the rural Eastern Cape province of South Africa in which each learner
and teacher has access to a tablet device connected to the Internet via the
school’s WIFI network. The contrast between the school’s socio-economic setting
and its way of teaching and learning couldn’t be stronger – fascinating stuff
for a PhD. Right now, I couldn’t care less about this though. I am hectically
staring on my cellphone waiting for the YouTube app to open. Google map tells
me I am 1h42 minutes away from my destination – more like 1h42 minutes away
from anything! Although I must admit that my rental car’s tire did chose a
rather convenient place to deflate: coming from East London, it quit 5 minutes
before the Great Kei River Pass. The views up here over the mountains are
amazing and the altitude means I should get a 3G connection after all to access
a YouTube tutorial on how to change my car’s tire.
Four
hours, a fully successful tire change experiment, and a semi-successful Odyssey
to receive a new tire from the rental car agency later, I smile as I pass the
scene of my earlier incident – I didn’t really expect to drive more the 500km
every day over four weeks without a little mechanic glitch, did I? Also, I know
that some teachers in the schools that I am visiting spent an equal amount of
time on their daily or weekly commute. Let’s face it, the Cofimvaba school
district is rural and even the next town – by the name of Queenstown fittingly
– does not really deserve its suffix. Cofimvaba is not the destination of
choice if you are a teacher or a learner in South Africa and the constant
headlines about Eastern Cape ‘education refugees’ in the country’s other provinces don’t help
much either.
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Cofimvaba school district: To turn or not
to turn?!
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Mvuzo
JS, as the other four schools that I have visited (Gando SP, Bangiliswe SP,
Khwaza SS, and Zamuxolo SP) have rising learners’ numbers though. Their
teachers attend Google summits and meet MECs. Classrooms have a whiteboard and
a projector. Lessons are facilitated via PowerPoint and chances are you will
bump into learners on your way to the school either mapping their community
using GPS technology or recording the inflation rate in primary goods sold by
local businesses. Teachers proudly rename their schools as ‘University of
Gando’ and ‘Mvuzo Institute of Technology’ – in their words, ‘it is us how know
about this technology, it started here in Cofimvaba’.
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Financial Maths lesson at Mvuzo (follow @fincaluvoz)
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Much has been written about the impact of the ICT4RED initiative on learning outcomes; the innovative training style featuring an earn-as-you-learn badge model; as well as the 21st century teaching strategies communicated by the project. This is well-deserved but neither was the reason I got excited about the project and sought permission to use it as a case study in my PhD research. In my understanding, ICT4RED supports in particular teachers to lead the kind of life they have reason to value. ICT4RED through the provision of a status symbol (that is a Galaxy 10” Tablet in rural areas) to teachers, through connecting teachers with each other and the wider educational community of practice, through the facilitation of an individual process of technology mastery and thereby earned ownership, has allowed teachers to create new opportunities for themselves. To me, this is the most exciting part of the ICT4RED story.
Technology
is all about opportunities – good and bad. The interviewed teachers feel for
example that they have more choices in how to teach with the tablets allowing
them to access a wider range of educational materials and teaching strategies.
Teacher feel like they have more control over their professional tasks being
able to prepare lessons at home or during the long commute to work. These
educational opportunities are complemented by new ways to use information and
to communicate. One teacher shares lesson plans through the tablet with her
former university roommate, who now teaches in Botswana. Another teacher stays
in contact via Viber with her PhD-pursuing daughter in Sweden. Others complain
that the constant access to Facebook is distracting them (Note: them, not the
learners!). Each of these examples show new ways of beings and doings that the
ICT4RED has created, but which often are not part of the main narrative of ICTs
in education.
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A lesson prepared at home by the teacher
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One
might wonder how a teacher’s use of Facebook or Viber is relevant when
reviewing a multi-million Rand project such as the ICT4RED. It is quite simple actually: Teachers value
the new opportunities the technology allows them to create for themselves. They
might not value the same opportunities the project intended to nurture. For
example, a teacher might not be fond of collaborating professionally via email;
the very same teacher, however, will tell you with glazing eyes how she is the
star at her local church reciting bibles verses from the Bible App she
downloaded on her tablet. This teacher has created a new opportunity for herself
and making use of that opportunity has increased her well-being. Her status
within her church has changed and she has enhanced her means to live the life
or be the person she has reason to value. How could a government programme be
any more successful than allowing citizens to achieve individually valued
beings and doings? Further, while not necessarily using the tablet to enhance
her own role as an educator, she has no objections to learners doing so and
believes that the tablets are of great benefit to them – an educational impact
indeed.
Technology
as an educational input, in particular when combined with Internet
connectivity, will not be limited to affect educational processes only. It
affects social and economic processes alike, and the holistic long-term impact
of ICT4RED might surprise policymakers, researchers, and even participants.
Nevertheless, what emerges strongly already is the transformation of education
in the Cofimvaba to become an education of choice. Each time an ICT4RED teacher
is the center of attention at a regional teachers’ meeting for recording the
event with her tablet; each time teachers of more affluent schools in East
London ask an ICT4RED teacher to show them how to use tablets as an educational
tool; each time policymakers, researchers, and tech geeks make their way amidst
flattening tires to the Cofimvaba schools; the daily work and profession of the
ICT4RED teachers is recognised. This recognition and respect might just be the
motivation teachers have needed to persist with the work they love anyway
despite the challenging socio-economic structure. Technology, in the short run,
cannot fix any of the underlying structural challenges of rural education in
Cofimvaba. It can, and does in the case of ICT4RED, however, serve as a ‘cherry
on top’ of a profession already valued, present a means to ‘motivate learners
to become me’ and aspire them to pursue a profession increasingly valued, and
act as ‘a tool to become a mobile teacher’ to enhance one’s practice of a
profession dearly valued.
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Teachers having fun exploring the tablets
together
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It is a
long drive back from Mvuzo and despite the South African summer heat the coffee
in my thermo mug somehow has become lukewarm. There is no coffee shop anywhere
within the next hour. The lesson I observed used a cupcake maker app to explain
the idea of food processing to the learners. The learners stirred dough on their
tablets, added sugar, and decorated their virtual cupcake creatively. It might
be a long shot – but maybe some years from now there might be a coffee shop in
Cofimvaba famous for its delicious cupcakes. I, for sure, would be a loyal
customer!
