AFRICA TREND

The water shortages in Cape Town have made all South Africans, particularly those living in the Western Cape, very much aware of the importance of saving water. But access to adequate, safe water is a global problem - we can both learn from ideas that are working in other countries, and our learners can contribute ideas of their own. In February 2018, you can sign up to take part in the iEARN Water is Life project. As part of this global collaborative project, your students will be involved in active research and action-oriented collaboration concerning water as the vital essence of life. Students will be encouraged and supported in the development of their learning. Working collaboratively with students in schools around the globe they will be encouraged to turn their research into ideas they can take to the community: local, national and global. The iEarn Water in Life project is aimed at students in primary and secondary schools and will take place between February and June 2018.

SchoolNet SA has created a new professional development course called School Libraries in the Digital Age . It explores learning technologies and online tools to enable the setup of digital libraries in the most effective way possible. The authors of the course were aware that the National Guidelines for School Library and Education Services specify the use of Information and Communication Technologies, which are now referred to as “digital tools and resources”.   The course consists of five modules, entitled:  1. Going Digital;  2. The Effective Use of Digital Resources;  3. Communication, Marketing and Social media;  4. Digital Literacy; and  5. Planning for Digitization.  The first training session was conducted for the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education’s Education Library, Information and Technology Services (ELITS) in December 2017. The KZN participants were very pleasantly surprised at how well the design and content resonated with their expectations; they were particularly

(submitted on behalf of EdTechTeam) Do your learners have access to tablets or phones that they can use to create short films? Are you looking for an opportunity for your learners to express themselves in a creative and meaningful way? Why not ask them to create a two-minute video responding to the theme "In Another's Shoes".  A new nonprofit StudentVoice.org has just launched the Global Student Voice Film Festival. This is an English-language film competition open globally to students ages 5-18. Students are invited to create a film no longer than 2 minutes responding to the prompt “In Another’s Shoes”. Participants are free to experiment with different mediums including animation, puppetry, stop motion or silent films. Your learners are welcome to interpret this theme in any way that they chose - so long as audience members can see how their creative work relates to the theme. In fact, creativity is encouraged as learners are encouraged to think beyond their first impr

Three South African educators, Leigh Morris, Lindsay Wesner and Chaim Moch have come up with a great idea to get more South African teachers connected to Twitter. - the ‘12 days of Twitter’ challenge, and a regular Twitter chat. What is the 12 days of Twitter challenge? It takes the form of a Game Board Hyperdoc with 12 challenges, which shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes a day. There is one for people who are new to Twitter, which takes teachers through the entire process of getting on Twitter, learning about how it works, getting them to Tweet etc. and culminates in having them join our very first #ZAedu Twitter chat on 31 January at 20:00; And then there is a different “Level Up” Challenge Board for the existing Tweeps with more advanced challenges and ways to participate. If you are not already on Twitter, the organisers would love you to join them and take part in the beginner challenge. Of course, if you are already a Twitter connoisseur, organisers would love it if you’d like

Submitted by Fiona Beal There are different types of assessment methods that we use in our classes on a regular basis, depending on the assessment task at hand. Do you use any didital tools to carry out these assessments? In this post I'll share a few ideas of some useful tools. But first, let's review some types of assessment Types of assessment You are probably familiar with all of these: 1. Summative assessment: This type of assessment aims to estimate the learners’ success in meeting the learning criteria set out in a particular subject or module. 2. Formative assessment: These are the varied methods that teachers use to conduct evaluations and collect information about their learners’ understanding, learning needs and progress in a subject during the lesson. 3. Interim assessment: This is a way of evaluating a learner’s performance at periodic intervals, often at the end of a topic. 4. Performance assessment : This is a form of testing that requires learners to d

The Internet is currently full of posts about using Microsoft products effectively in the classroom. Here are a The Internet is currently full of posts about using Microsoft products effectively in the classroom. Here are a number of them from this past week. The list is embedded below but can also be found at: this link:  http://bit.ly/2m7EwlW   . The link to the back-dated posts is:  http://bit.ly/1GVLTUZ  

Submitted by Fiona Beal How do you share links with others during class or in a workshop? I have used several methods and thought I would document and share some of them in a blog post. SHARING LINKS IN A CLASSROOM SETTING 1. Use Google Classroom https://classroom.google.com/  I use Google Classroom with all my classes. Truth is, I love the application. Whenever I have a class at school the first thing everyone does is log into their Google Classroom account where everything I want to share with the class is waiting. If I have collected a list of links on a topic for them to investigate, the  list is right there in Google Classroom. My school is a GSuite school, but if you are not you can still use Google Classroom with your class as long as your learners have Gmail accounts that you can link to it.   2. Use the SharetoClassroom Chrome extension https://goo.gl/5b64di If we are in the middle of a lesson and I want  to share a new link with my class that isn’t in their Google Classroom

After looking through all the Google posts that were shared to various subscriptions recently, these are a selection that look useful for teachers  https://goo.gl/PCXHbG  (The link to previous posts can be found here  https://goo.gl/CNO3M2 ).