Awarenet, the Department of Education, as well as the Rhodes University education department have collaborated in efforts to bring ICT teacher training sessions to our local schools. The three organizations run different training programs but the aim of them collaborating is to ensure that many teachers as possible are reached, and that there isn’t any overlap, and that the programs are mutually beneficial. The purpose of the ICT teacher training programs is to assist teachers in utilizing ICT tools/techniques for educational purposes. The aim is for teachers to use ICT tools when delivering their lessons whether it be in their classrooms or making use of their school’s computer lab. .
Another purpose of the collaboration between Awarenet, Department of Education and Rhodes University is to host TeachMeet sessions. TeachMeet is an organized but informal meeting for teachers to share good practice, practical innovations and personal insights in teaching. There will be four sessions this year, the first one had already taken place on the 27th of February, dates for the next three sessions are yet to be confirmed. In this first session, Dr. Clement Simuja from the RU DoE demonstrated Google Classroom to teachers.
The purpose of Google Classroom is to streamline the process of sharing of files between teachers and students in a paperless way. This was an important tool to demonstrate because the purpose of our organizations is to ensure that teachers use online resources in a way that makes teaching more efficient.
It was then decided that the following three sessions would be sessions where teachers would come back and demonstrate how they used Google Classroom in their teaching. The teachers enjoyed discovering and exploring Google Classroom so much that all of them said they would start the process of implementing it in their classrooms.
