OER4Schools/ICT forum SA 2012

Higher Education & ICT Forum: Emerging Digital Technologies for Higher Education Excellence Johannesburg, South Africa 28 – 29 March 2012

Keynote presentation:

Can teacher education focused on interactive teaching with digital resources leverage change in African schooling?

Dr Sara Hennessy

Centre for Commonwealth Education

University of Cambridge

The presentation reports on the OER4schools project which innovates by combining interactive teaching and learning, mobile forms of educational technology and open educational resources (OER) in the most optimal way to support integration of ICT use into basic schools, particularly in mathematics and science teaching. We are creating a multimedia professional development resource that could be used in pre-service or in-service teacher education; our current partners include a teacher college and the University of Zambia.

The resource supports interactive teaching and collaborative, inquiry-based learning through using ICT, OER and Open Source software – as appropriate for teachers’ own purposes and settings. It includes a range of high quality video clip exemplars filmed in the Zambian basic school classrooms where we have been conducting research and development work over the last 2 years, activities designed to develop interactive pedagogy, and a bank of open resources for teaching primary and secondary level mathematics and science. Our approach builds on an established process for teacher-led discussion, trailing new ideas, peer observation and joint reflection, all stimulated and guided by the professional development materials. The resource can be used in contexts with and without ICT availability and is being participatively developed in conjunction with local stakeholders. The aim is to work towards lasting transformation in Zambian education but with anticipated relevance to a wide range of countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

See the evolving professional learning resource at

http://orbit.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/OER4Schools

For more information and publications from the OER4schools project:

http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/cce/initiatives/projects/ictzambia/

Literature review:

Hennessy, S., Onguko, B., Ang'ondi, E. K., Harrison, D., Namalefe, S., Naseem, A., et al. (2010). Developing use of ICT to enhance teaching and learning in East African schools: A review of the literature. Cambridge, UK and Dar es salaam, Tanzania: Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development - Eastern Africa.

Download the review from http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/cce/initiatives/projects/ict/

Contact details

Dr. Sara Hennessy

Senior Lecturer in Teacher Development and Pedagogical Innovation

Centre for Commonwealth Education

Faculty of Education

University of Cambridge

184 Hills Road

Cambridge CB2 8PQ

UK

sch30(at)cam.ac.uk

http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/hennessy/