Celebrating another #ict4red success story in Carnarvon

Last night we, yet again, came to the finale of another #ict4red training intervention in the heart of the Karoo in Carnarvon. The teachers of Carnarvon Hoërskool really did excel themselves with high quality tablet integrated lessons which were produced to earn their tablets and show what they have learned about using mobile devices in the classroom. But it was so much more than that!!

As always we had a lot of fun during this implementation. This was also the very first time that the course was conducted in Afrikaans. This in itself was a challenge as quite a few of the mobile terminology terms just do not quite exist in Afrikaans and we had a lot of fun with "innovative" translations. The teachers in the process took ownership of the course and we had a 98% pass rate with 75% of the teachers completing the challenge badges as well! Really worth a joyous celebration!

This happy occasion was supported by the Department of Education, representatives from the Department of Science and Technology, representatives from the SKA (Square Kilometer Array) project, and the training team from the Maraka Institute (CSIR), who were responsible for project management, workshop facilitation and assessment.  Delegates from the primary school attended as well and expressed the hope that they will also have the opportunity to partake in this fun teacher professional development initiative.

Five of the teachers were chosen to present the strategies that they enjoyed most while implementing the course material in their classrooms. They all agreed that it was a lot of fun and did not feel like training at all. They shared that the tablets were very motivating to the learners and contributed to better discipline in the classrooms. Some of them admitted that they were terrified in the beginning as they suffered from "techno-phobia", but are now convinced of the value of using technology in their classrooms. They are now comfortable with their tablets and made use of the occasion to campaign for more tablets and mobi-kits for their learners.

The evening was concluded with a delicious dinner and discussions on how to take this further. The enthusiasm was noted by all the speakers and we know that the Carnarvon staff will be shining their techno light in the heart of the Karoo!!

Module 9: Galleryloop- Uitstalling 3- Uitstalling 3: Persoonlike leernetwerke

Professionele leergemeenskappe word gevorm wanneer groepe onderwysers saamkom, aanlyn of andersins, om idees, onderrigstrategië, bronne en inspirasie te deel. In hierdie kursus het jy alreeds baie geleer oor die verskillende maniere waarmee jy iets kan deel met kollegas of onderwysers van ander skole met behulp van aanlyn sosiale media soos Twitter en facebook. Ons hoop dat jy verder sal voortbou hierop deur jou tablet te gebruik om jou te help!

Kyk in jou Module 9 Hulpbronne Uitstallings 3 leêr vir meer inligting hoe om sulke groepe te begin.

‘n Paar leidende vrae:

 Kan ek altyd kry waarvoor ek soek?
 Kan jy vir hulp vra?
 Sal jy deel wees van ‘n groep van onderwysers wat mekaar help, hulpbronne deel en omgee?
 Is die navigasie verbruikers vriendelik?

Uitstalling 3A: www.google.com

Uitstalling 3B: www.en.wikipedia.org

Uitstalling 3C: www.mathsliteracy.co.za

Uitstalling 3D: 

Report back storify from our Field trip and gallery walk

#Carnivaltabletfun day preparations!! Jaribaaaaa

It is that time of the year again when we look back and celebrate our success!! And what a successful year we had! All our schools have earned their data projectors and some have even earned  mobi-kits for their learners through their sheer determination and hard work. To date our badge collectors have collected 1950 badges- Wow, wow,wow! So we sure have a lot to celebrate. (For more information on how our badging Earn As You Learn System works, click here)

Our theme this year is Carnival tablet fun and we are planning a bumper celebration!! This year we will again be doing a large scale learning stations strategy. This will show the teachers how this strategy can work on a larger scale to learn stuff while at the same time having fabulous fun! They have been exposed to this learning and teaching strategy as part of our 10 module learner centered TPD course (See http://www.ict4red.blogspot.com/p/tpd-course.html)

We are hoping to trend again on Twitter like we did last year with lots of happy stories abound! See our Twitter #tabletfunday story here: http://ict4red.blogspot.com/2013/11/our-tabletfunday-twitter-story.html . There will be food stalls and a few exhibitors and lots and lots and lots of prizes for our teachers.

This year our hosts are Get Ahead College in Queenstown  (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Get-Ahead-Project/) who has enthusiastically agreed to allow us to change their school into a carnival funland! There will be entertainment on the Bus-stage and the classrooms will be the locations for fun learning stations!!

The programme so far looks like this:

• 8h00-9h00 Registration 
• 9h00-9h30 Welcome, housekeeping, introduction of Exhibitors and introduction to the twitter backchannel.
• 9h30-13h00 Learning stations:
• Exhibitor stations (Rugani Carrots, Schoolnet, Google, Microsoft)
• Twitter stations
• Badge collection station
• Tech and app station
• Mouse station (Monitoring and evaluation story collection)
• Blog station
• Flower and feather station 
• Game and joke station
• Shoe-shoe station
• Drawing and face painting station
• Mobile skill challenge station
• So far...... 
• 9h00-13h00  Refreshment stations throughout the day (hot dog stations, pancake stations, cappuccino stations
• 13h00-15h00 Carnival draw and fun

Prizes
Our funday would not be a funday without lots and lots of prizes. We really want to thank our sponsors for coming to the "party" and donating lovely prizes for our teachers.

Some of the amazing sponsors so far are:

• Afrihost is again sponsoring a great Zest 2 Dual sim Mobile phone like they did last year. They also have great mobile data deals. (for more see their website here: www.afrihost.co.za)
• Schoolnet is sponsoring 3 cameras and goodies (www.schoolnet.org.za)
• Google is coming loaded with caps, bags, usb drives and stuffies
• Casio and NMMU counts in with calculators and a really fab ladies and gents watch
• Rugani carrots will keep us healthy with loads of carrots, usb drives and goodies. (http://www.ruganicarrots.co.za / https://www.facebook.com/RuganiCarrots) 
• Lymmyl Technologies is keeping our teachers connected with data bundles
• Benita Williams and Associates is donating a R1000 to spend on cool stuffies

We will also be handing over the earned data projectors to the various schools, earned incentives to teachers,  as well as announcing which schools have earned their learner mobikits. 

Prizes categories

Some of the categories that we will be fun-ning for:

• Completing the carnival journey. 
• Biggest learning twit (most tweets)
• Best photogragh/ photo collage
• Best tweet
• Best blogpost
• Lovely-est flower power photo
• Most original shoe-shoe
• Best edu-tab story
• Highest game score
• Best joke
• Best carnival picture drawn
• Best carnival dress-up.
• .......

If you want to still donate some cool prizes please send us an email to ict4red@gmail.com so that we can organise collection and transport to Queenstown! See our sponsor letter here for more information on how you can get involved. 

Come prepared!!

Sooooo, we are in for a wonderful, let our hair down and have our tablets ready to capture fab-fun- moments-kind-of-a-day. Teachers must make sure that their tablets are loaded and ready for action. 

Everybody must come dressed up already. Put on your feathers and curls or come in traditional Xhosa gear- you must be dressed up!. there will be a big prize for the best dressed teacher!!

Role play as a teaching strategy

During the week of 12-14 of August,  the ICT4RED Phase 3 teachers gathered to investigate Role Play as a teaching strategy in their classrooms. This time round we could not do the training at the various schools as most of the schools were to remote and we opted for schools that we could reach. The schools were clustered together and as per usual, great fun was had by all!

Role play, our third teaching strategy, aims to address issues that may arise when implementing mobile devices in the classroom. It is a great strategy to unpack possible problems and we have added the condition that the role play has to include innovative solutions. The teachers were randomly given scenarios that they had to brainstorm and find solutions to. They then had to "act it out" while one of the group members video the role play.

The process

In putting together the role play, we followed a process that resulted in the teachers anticipating issues and finding solutions. The scenarios were designed to help teachers and schools cope with change management when implementing tablets into the classroom e.g. 

• Should learners be able to take the tablets home as they may lose or damage it?
• How do you manage resources like mobikits within a school scenario?
• Parent's fear of their childrens' safety when taking devices home.
• Teacher's struggling to deal with the demands of implementing devices into their classrooms 

Assessment

We used peer assessment to evaluate if the teachers succeeded in unpacking their scenarios. They swapped devices and used a scoring sheet to find a "winning team". This resulted in an animated discussions of how fair peer assessment really is and in one instance we had to do a role play to defuse a potential riot situation! 

Some problems

There is never a dull moment to be had in Cofimvaba.. On the first day of training, our generator did not want to work and we proved that we could use tablets in not only a non connected environment, but also without any electricity! As most of the training were held at primary school venues, we struggled to get our slightly larger bodies to fit into the tiny desk spaces! We also had trouble blue-toothing all the videos to each other as it is a time consuming process and you can only do one video at a time. 

But despite some minor challenges, great fun was had by all and role play as a teaching and learning strategy got the thumbs up from all the teachers. We are looking forward to seeing how it will be implemented in our teachers' classrooms!

We want to thank the whole #ict4red team present who helped to bluetooth, install apps and offer encouragement. ICT4RED rocks!

All the photos from our Role play module can be found here:

• http://goo.gl/1KZNaN 

ICT4RED Champions go Google!

In the first week of July four of our ICT4RED Cofimvaba champion teachers, Mandlakazi Bikitsha, Sindiswa  Mwanda, Nomonde Tyembile, Wisiwe Mvandaba and 1 district e-learning facilitator, Sindi Sibawu, were invited by the Google Edtechteam to attend the Google Summit at Dainfern College in Johannesburg.

Here are some thoughts from our champions:

Sindiswa Sibawu
Cofimvaba ICT Champions were honoured to be invited to Google Summit by ICT4RED, CSIR & SCHOOLNET teams. The event was well organised especially the presenters in every session were well prepared.  We are looking forward to keep in touch with every one we met in Google Summit for professional development especially Karen who was kind to E.C. delegates in all aspects.  We're willing to share the ideas and information with all our educators in the Eastern Cape.

Nomonde Tyembile
The summit was an activity that was well organised and we thank the Edtech team, Schoolnet and all other stakeholders who made the summit a success.As the team Cofimvaba ict4red champs, we had a great time in learning that teaching and learning can be a fun, great and also be a success for the learners in South Africa, through the use of technology and the internet. We wish, as the Cofimvaba team,  that the summit we attended, be organised locally so that all the educators out there are well informed of how teaching and learning can be enjoyed by learners and how it can change their attitudes towards their everyday teaching.

We are prepared to change the situation at our schools through the information we got at the summit to produce "LIFE LONG LEARNERS WHO WILL BE ABLE TO COMPETE WITH THE REST OF THE LEARNERS WORLD WIDE"

Mandlakazi Bikitsha

Wow! The 2nd Annual Google Summit was another round of professional development for 5 delegates from the Cofimvaba education district. It was a huge success, for we came back capacitated and ready for action! It was so uplifting.

The sessions I attended were awesome. I saw how social media in my class can impact on learning, for it is also another platform where writing and collaboration takes place- a way to engage learners. I came back empowered and motivated to use social media as one of the effective tools to facilitate learning. Problem based strategies really make learners think out of the box. It makes them own their learning as they explore solutions to the problem. However, Chrome books, Netbooks and Tablets are just technological tools invented to bridge the gap in the digital divide and teachers need not shift their focus, for the integration of technology in teaching and learning is part of preparing our learners for a socially networked workplace.

When defining the word` TECHNOLOGY ‘we say, it is the use of knowledge, skills and resources…The knowledge I gained from the summit when shared with learners will unleash ideas on the learners, for they can also be the source of information. We need to get them exposed to google apps, for they need to acquire skills in preparation for the workplace tomorrow and use the resources at their disposal which in our case as Cofimvaba Education District, is mobile tablets. Attending the Google summit has made me foresee the attainment of the 21st century goals in education whereby teachers and learners are to be technological savvy. I HAVE GONE GOOGLE!!!

Some fun learning moments:

Our ICT4RED graduation celebration story

Subject advisers experience the ICT4RED TPD course material

Our #tabletfunday twitter story