Teachers in South Africa

The international experience on schooling reform provides a compelling set of ideas about how to get South Africa's struggling schooling system moving in the right direction

Seems that some provinces has started the roll-out (NWP) process and some has canned the process for the time being (EC). All I know is that the provinces has to spend the money allocated to the laptop project within the next 3 years

"I often joke that the really good students do well "despite my teaching"… While I am not dead serious when saying it, there is a certain amount of discomfort in me when saying it. This begs the question whether our education system produce winners? "

"ICT-in-Education Toolkit provides education policy makers, planners and practitioners with a systematic process to formulate, plan and evaluate education development programs enhanced by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)."

Done by local headmaster

The Young Engineers and Scientists of Africa (YESA) is an initiative aimed at increasing the pipeline Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Innovation (STEMI). YESA interventions operate from Grades 0-12 and are designed to supplement the national curriculum in a stimulating and challenging environment to promote creativity and innovation. All interventions are aimed at addressing the gaps in the developmental stages of providing support to learners through a broad range of activities.

"iTALC is a use- and powerful didactical tool for teachers. It lets you view and control other computers in your network in several ways. It supports Linux and Windows 2000/XP and it even can be used transparently in mixed environments!"

Education providers in South Africa is waking up to mobile learning solutions

Professor David Crystal is a world renowned linguistic expert and author of 30+ books on the topic. In 31 minutes David dispels five myths surrounding today's wired youth and the impact on language.

"This guide avoids some of the obvious things, like using Google Docs for collaborative writing, and instead focuses on some of the lesser-used Google tools options like publishing an online quiz using Google Docs. In all there are 33 pages containing 21 ideas and how to instructions for creating Google Maps placemarks, directions creating and publishing a quiz with Google Docs forms, directions for embedding books into your blog, and visual aids for accessing other Google tools."

GREAT example of getting youth involved in mobile learning!! Well done Steve!

"Sweet Search is a search engine that searches only the sites that have been reviewed and approved by a team of librarians, teachers, and research experts. In all there are 35,000 websites that have been reviewed and approved by Sweet Search. In addition to the general search engine, Sweet Search offers five niche search engines. The niche search engines are for Social Studies, Biographies, SweetSites (organized by grade and subject area), School Librarians, and Sweet Search 4 Me (for elementary school students)."

"Some Members were uncomfortable that each new Minister seemed to introduce new systems"

"The Committee commenced its public hearings into the challenges in access to and delivery of quality education in South Africa. This would lead to a report being tabled by the Committee to assist the Department in its planning around education issues. "

Whata dvantages is there to writing maths paper 3?

The 2009 Naths olympiad for grades R-9 is taking place in October. FOr a free CD see the website

Jippeee the publishers have finally woken up to social media!!

Join me and get blogging....

I have decided to run all my essential teacher toolkit tools as learning pathways /un-workshops online (We are all gatvol of workshops). This just means that I will be featuring a tool at a time in a focused and step by step way, taking everybody through the steps collaboratively and with community support (hopefully). This will all happen online using my learnwithmaggie community as our base, this school 2.0 blog, our SASchools wiki and the featured tools.

Numeric is interested in finding ways to increase access to and usability of Khan Academy in South Africa. If you've never heard of Khan Academy, it is an outstanding online learning tool primarily targeted at school level mathematics. You can read more here, or check out their website directly at www.khanacademy.org. But we're not only talking about accessibility and usability, we're putting our money where our mouth is and taking it into the field ourselves! Numeric is piloting Khan Academy in township and rural areas in the Eastern and Western Cape, translating the videos into Xhosa, and providing useful tools for teachers and learners to make this resource more user friendly.