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Sneak Preview of Pre-Conference Events

© eLearning Africa

Before the opening of the main conference at eLearning Africa, pre-conference meetings, seminars and workshops will be held on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010, offering participants the opportunity to learn a new skill, enhance their knowledge or gather information about a specific topic. Such activities are not only excellent opportunities in themselves, but are also valuable pre-conference networking activities in their own right.

The pre-conference workshops are either half-day or full-day events and aim to develop participants’ practical skills or build on their knowledge of a particular area. The emphasis is on activity and interaction, so the number of participants is limited. The first three eLearning Africa 2010 workshops have just been announced.

Training Trainers to Use ICT in Higher Education

The Flemish Interuniversity Council (VLIR) Project, together with the University of Nairobi and the University of Western Cape, will present the results of their fruitful collaboration in this full-day workshop. Over a period of five years, teaching materials for ICT training in Higher Education were assembled. These materials will enable trainers in educational institutions to teach stakeholders at all levels how to use ICT, including managers, lecturers, students and technical staff.

Participants will have the opportunity to learn more about the teaching materials and view/test them for their own training purposes. This workshop will be led by the ICT experts Georges Eisendrath and Arno Libotton from Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Elija Omwenga from the University of Nairobi and Paul Scott from the University of the Western Cape. All the presenters have been involved in implementing learning environments in different African Universities.

GeSCI-PanAf Joint Workshop on Research in ICT Education and Development

The education specialists Mary Hooker from GeSCI and Toby Harper-Merrett from PanAf will jointly host this half-day workshop on research in ICT Education and Development. The event will be framed by the GeSCI commissioned ICT Education Meta-Review Research carried out by John Le Baron and Beth Mc Donough in 2009 and the report’s key findings will be discussed. The research has revealed not only an apparent disconnection between ICT in Education and mainstream research, but also a general absence of the “southern voice” in ICT-Education literature.

The workshop will be divided into two sessions and the first one will outline the rationale and major findings of the GeSCI Research. It will also present African research models and networks, thereby providing a forum for researchers from different institutions and partnerships to share their original work, models and insights about the research development process in Africa. In the second session, the presenters will provide an overview of the GeSCI and PanAf programmes to build capacity and promote research in ICT4E and development. They will also invite participants to engage in an interactive panel discussion on the development of a southern research agenda in ICT-Education. The workshop will bring together researchers and collaborating partners and will serve as a knowledge exchange platform for African ICT-Education Research.

Grassroots Concept to Inspire Educators to Use ICT

The Grassroots project aims to stimulate, support and reward teaching staff who use ICT in their own teaching and thus promote the use of ICT in education as a whole.

Delft University of Technology (DUT) in the Netherlands and Colleges of Education and community schools in Zambia both followed a similar approach by introducing the Grassroots project, in order to enhance their skills in using ICT in education. In the workshop, eLearning advisor Leonie Meijerink and senior educational consultant Sofia Dopper from DUT, together with educational technologist Bart Cornille from the Flemish Association for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance, will compare both case studies and investigate whether Grassroots provides an opportunity to bridge the digital divide and how the set up and organisation of Grassroots differs in each country.

Following a general introduction to the Grassroots concept, lecturers and teachers from both Zambian educational institutions and DUT will present their practical experiences in this half-day workshop. Moreover, participants will be invited to tackle and discuss questions on the topic in small groups.

This workshop offers participants an excellent opportunity to learn about hands-on experiences of how to use ICT in Education in innovative ways. It will also provide advice on how to organise similar projects and how to motivate lecturers and teachers at a Grassroots level.

For more information, please see: www.icto.tudelft.nl/en/ongoing-projects/grassroots/tu-delft-grassroots/, http://grassrootszambia.webs.com/

January 26, 2009

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