SchoolNet SA's Lessons Learned and Recommendations

Janet Thomson from SchoolNet South Africa has contributed a very valuable post to the Educational Technology Debate website (ETD). Go to the original post to read all about their work and programmes. In order to share their Lessons Learned and Recommendations more widely, I have copied them for the iConnect Education group members here below:

Lessons learned

1. Educational Technology interventions often forget about the “educational” part and consider it to be completed once they have installed the technology. This results in teachers not being trained and consequently hardware remaining unused.
2. We must split training sessions and revisit schools to allow for a period of practice and self study before the trainer returns to the school to consolidate.
3. Teachers complain that training sessions are too short and that they do not have enough time for training or for practice.
4. Cascaded training, where multiple training of trainers takes place, does not work; it dilutes learning and quality is jeopardised. If a project requires a high degree of scale, trainers should be trained by a national master trainer and thereafter train directly in schools themselves.
5. We are not reaching the knowledge deepening level of the UNESCO Framework. Intel Teach project based courses are at this level, where the emphasis is on higher order thinking skills. Insufficient teachers are completing Intel courses; only two provinces have invested seriously in Intel Teach. If we study the TPACK theory (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) it becomes clear that teachers in many of our schools have challenges in each of the 3 separate knowledge areas let alone in the 4 sections where these areas intersect.
6. Teachers are unaware of what is available. From the Gauteng Department of Education evaluation we conducted with SAIDE, it became evident that not only do teachers have little knowledge of what resources are available to them online, but they are unaware of the array of educational software provided on their own school networks. This is directly due to insufficient teacher professional development in initiatives that are technology driven.
7. Access for learners in high schools is reduced when schools decide to offer external exam subjects such as IT and CAT because these monopolise the computer rooms. Only schools with alternative access such as two computer rooms or a mobile lab should consider offering these subjects.
8. High school teachers often argue that they cannot integrate ICT because they have to complete their syllabus, instead of realising that ICT can greatly assist to achieve this.
9. The disconnect between teachers and learners is growing. Schools need to be connected and pedagogy has to adapt. Children are online and becoming more connected, living in an exciting world of communication and “instant” everything. Then in classrooms, teachers say, “open your books and turn to page …. “ A high dropout rate should not be a surprise. As the saying goes, “If children do not learn the way we teach then we must teach the way they learn.”
10. Beware of Interactive Whiteboards (IAW). IAW have proliferated in schools despite the expense and yet in many instances this has resulted in teaching methodology reverting back to being teacher-centred.
11. Sugata Mitra’s TED Talk, Child-driven Education, illustrates through the cognitive studies that he has conducted. that children learn more effectively through discourse in groups. Mitra takes “child-centred” one step further to become “child-driven”.
12. At SchoolNet we are sceptical of educational software that does not require 21st Century learning skills and wary that some m-learning projects use merely drill and kill content.
13. It is important to commence ICT initiatives with the school leadership because they have great influence over the future take-up of technology by teaching staff.

What we recommend

We recommend sustainable plans for staff development in schools; ICT planning that is focused on the teaching and learning needs of educators. Teachers require lifelong learning opportunities.
Connectivity in schools has to be provided and at a reduced, or no cost, to the school.

We are seeing the value of android handheld and mobile devices with charging trolleys because these satisfy the need for learners to be involved, hands on and not just one learner at a time; they have to share the technology and share ideas, just as Mitra advocates.

Mobile phone use in schools has to be accepted. Teachers can collect second hand phones and allow working in groups to ensure that learners without phones are not excluded.

Obviously the one recommendation that SchoolNet is going to make time and time again is that there has to be greater investment in teacher development. The business community has to be strategically involved; they must specify the skills they require school leavers to have so that teaching is forced to adapt to developing those skills.

source: https://edutechdebate.org/teacher-professional-development/schoolnet-sa-...