One step closer to achieving a scalable 21st century learning solution to narrow the learning divide between Africa and the industrialized world

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Published: 09/20/10 01:01 PM EDT

BERNARDSVILLE, N.J. and DAKAR, Senegal, Sept. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- CyberSmart Africa's innovative techniques are helping Senegal to achieve UN Millennium Development Goal 2, universal primary education. Through its "Sustainable 21st Century Learning Initiative," CyberSmart's "tech-lite" approach puts learning first -- uniquely focusing on teacher training and putting the latest low-power, portable equipment to work directly in the classrooms of rural schools -- including those off the electric grid.

CyberSmart Africa integrates the use of a specially adapted interactive whiteboard and other low-power digital tools which move easily between classrooms. Ongoing teacher training guides the educators in using these tools to facilitate an active and engaging classroom.

"This is a practical, scalable solution that reaches rural schools -- the ones most frequently ignored. Plus, with our emphasis on professional development, we foster 21st century professional learning communities, where teachers collaborate, share and build knowledge by supporting one another," said Jim Teicher, CyberSmart Africa Director.

In Mbour, Senegal, teachers develop interactive whiteboard lessons to enhance the Senegalese curriculum. Trainings encourage the development of student lessons emphasizing critical thinking and problem solving, the skills necessary in today's globalized workplace. In nearby Louga and Leona, in partnership with The Earth Institute at Columbia University's Millennium Villages and Millennium Cities projects, 120 middle school students use the interactive Livescribe Pulse smartpen to extend and support math and English language learning.

The results of the first semester pilot show:

• teachers reliability, efficiently, and regularly used the technologies to support classroom instruction
• more than 500 students in four schools were exposed to 80 newly developed lessons enriching the Senegalese curriculum
• teachers were highly energized by the new technologies
• access to timely information and interactive activities increased student motivation and learning according to teachers reports
• student tardiness and absence were greatly reduced
• students and teachers were quick to adopt and adapt the new technology skills
• teacher training and feedback sessions nurtured an organically grown and scalable professional learning community where staff now turn to their colleagues for support

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/47247019@N04/

Website: http://www.cybersmartafrica.org

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CyberSmartAfrica

Contact: Jim Teicher, Director

CyberSmart Africa

Email: jim@cybersmart.org

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SOURCE CyberSmart Africa

Whole Class 21st Century Learning Works for Every School!

CyberSmart! Africa is piloting whole class 21st century learning at the elementary level. Why whole class learning? Because it enables more students – even in the poorest schools – to efficiently benefit from living in a globalized world!

We have adapted interactive white board capabilities to serve the unique needs of development education in Africa. Our technology is easily transported between classrooms, even those where light shines through holes in the roof! In fact, the whole set-up can be disassembled and reassebled by teachers and students in 10 minutes or less! It consumes very little power, but is powerful in terms of delivering all of the basic interactive functions.

Focusing on learning, heavy on training

We use interactive whiteboards as a catalyst to develop an active classroom where the teacher facilitates student engagement in the learning process, as compared to a lecture style of instruction. Nearly all of our efforts (and budget) goes into professional development, where teachers learn how to carry on learner-centered instructional conversation with students. Furthermore, teachers support each through ongoing meetings, and archiving lessons they have found to resonate in the classroom.

The whole class instructional approach enables us to integrate technology directly into authentic, everyday classroom teaching and learning. For example, when it’s time for science instruction the teacher might draw on the resources available through the Microsoft Encarta multimedia encyclopedia or Wikipedia.

We are also realizing other benefits to the whole class instructional approach, including:

• an observable increase in student motivation
• an appeal to various learning styles, such as visual learners
• the ability for an entire class to gain knowledge through the use of integrated software, including multimedia encyclopedias
• the ability for students to learn and apply basic ICT skills within the context of classroom instruction
• the ability for teachers to scan, display, and work with textbook content that would not otherwise be possible due to book shortages

In sharp contrast to the use of interactive whiteboards in technology-rich developed nations, the interactive whiteboard represents students’ only hope to gain regular exposure to interactive learning software, multimedia encyclopedias, and the internet. Furthermore, use of the interactive whiteboard is continually facilitated by a well-trained educator who has actually created lessons that are carefully aligned to the national curriculum, as well as 21st century learning standards as defined by UNESCO and the International Society for Technology in Education.

How much ICT is enough? Without standards, nobody knows!

What is a standard? It’s an agreed-on level of practice by which something can be measured and evaluated. Without implementing standards, there is no way to determine success! Nor can we learn succinctly from the successes - and failures - of others in the field.

Indeed, standards are everywhere. At home, we raise our children to meet certain standards of behavior. Our automobiles are inspected, speed limits are established and rules of the road apply in order to meet safety standards. Hotels and restaurants that have attained a higher star ranking are considered to have achieved certain standards of excellence. And every nation in the world has established multiple standards for learning by which students are assessed. Without these standards, our children might be considered rude, our cars crash more often, our service be subpar, and our children less guided to academic success.

How much ICT is enough for elementary schools, middle schools and high schools? Without standards, who knows? Still, I see computers being installed in schools throughout Africa without much guidance from the internationally recognized learning standards. It’s as if learning will just ‘happen’ once the technology is in place, as if computers and the Internet themselves provide some magical solution that will automatically enable quality pedagogy.

We are hypnotized by technology because this is the 21st century, and we are impatient to connect and achieve all of the social and economic benefits associated with living in a globalized world, thanks to the magical computer solution. Companies, governments and institutions spend vast sums of money to build and maintain school computer facilities with every good intention - but it’s not enough. The result, more often than not, is that school computer facilities are inappropriately utilized, and more often simply underutilized, because their net contribution to student learning is vague at best.

CyberSmart! Africa’s approach to ICT integration is simple. We begin with a strong foundation based on how teachers can teach and how students can learn in order to reap long-term social and economic benefits from our globalized world. The technologies we employ are then backed into specific learning objectives; and the objectives are based on globally recognized standards.

Globally recognized standards for 21st century learning do exist and they should be seriously considered in order to maximize the benefits of technology in service of learning. Both UNESCO and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) have developed a framework of standards by which 21st century learning can be effectively integrated with everyday teaching and learning. Together, they provide the basis for a comprehensive assessment system for both teachers and students.

See the following:

UNESCO ICT Competency Standards for Teachers
International Society for Technology in Education Standards for Teachers
International Society for Technology in Education Standards for Students

CyberSmart! Africa = 21st Learning for Every School!

What drives us at CyberSmart Africa? It’s all about inclusion – leaving no school behind – even those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. How is it done? By implementing sustainable and scalable approaches to education that draw upon affordable and innovative technologies, the latest research, and community-building activities among schools.

Having just celebrated 50 years of independence and self-rule, and facing health, economic, and educational challenges - as do many of its neighbors in the Global South - Senegal is struggling to continue to develop itself and prepare for a better future. In order to succeed economically in today’s world, it must raise a generation of young learners who possess 21st century skills. This includes the ability to collaborate, think critically, solve meaningful problems, and integrate digital tools.


Technology must be in service to learning, not the other way around

Tech lite: We use inexpensive, portable equipment suitable for use in every school – even those with only the barest of infrastructure. Computer labs are not a requirement, or even feasible for most schools. We also believe that ICT skills can be learned naturally as a by-product of supporting instructional strategies and everyday classroom learning.

Pedagogy: We encourage an active, learner-centered classroom where students assume the responsibility for learning while the teacher plays the role of facilitator.

Training: Teachers participate in supportive professional learning communities. They create, adapt, and improve lessons at the grassroots level.

Sustainability: The focus is to build a self-supporting instructional capacity with a minimum fixed ICT infrastructure investment.

Scalability: Teacher learning communities connect, share knowledge, and benefit from scale as learning materials and experiences are shared among larger quantities of participants. Our minimum and low cost technology infrastructure allows for rapid growth.

CyberSmart! Africa’s Pilot Initiative in Senegal

Our pilot initiative shows that every classroom can be a 21st century classroom!

CyberSmart! Africa is introducing cost-effective and locally adapted solutions in support of learner-centered pedagogy in four regional/rural elementary and middle schools in 2 administrative regions, plus one out-of-school, informal education learning environment.

We coach teachers to develop lessons and classroom activities correlated to the Senegalese national curriculum. Our pedagogical model is designed to be maintainable and reproducible. Pilot activities focus on whole class elementary school instruction in core academic subjects, plus highly personalized middle school and out-of-school instruction. All aspects of this pilot initiative correlate to 21st century learning standards adopted by UNESCO and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

The pilot initiative operates through 2010 and plans call for expansion to include 20 schools in 2011. The participating schools are located in and around Mbour and Louga, Senegal.

Technology

CyberSmart! Africa has customized and integrated a highly innovative and cost-effective approach for whole class instruction. We use a low cost interactive whiteboard configuration that has been specially adapted to work in every classroom environment – even those where the sun shines straight through holes in the celing! We also use Livescribe Pulse Smartpens to deliver powerful interactive lessons that combine four powerful learning modalities – speaking, writing, reading, and listening. All lesson content is developed at the grassroots level. To complement all of these activities, CyberSmart! Africa engages students and teachers by using ‘Flip’ video cameras to create digital stories that excite and inspire the entire community.

Background

CyberSmart! Africa began in 2007 as a single-school, personal initiative of Jim Teicher, co-founder of CyberSmart! Education (USA), a company engaged in teacher online professional development in 21st century skills. CyberSmart! Africa partners include the Senegalese Ministry of Education, The Millennium Villages Project and its urban counterpart, the Millennium Cities Initiative (joint initiatives of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Millennium Promise and the United Nations Development Programme), and The Women’s Health Education and Prevention Strategic Alliance (WHEPSA), operating the “10,000 Girls” initiaitve in Kaolack, Senegal.

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Thanks, Livescribe!

The Livescribe Pulse SmartPen - an individualized 21st century learning tool that we are introducing in West Africa -- provides an eye-opening and innovative learning intervention in a world where technology integration has always been associated with installing school computer labs and then learning ICT skills in them.

The Livescribe SmartPen is an amazing new learning tool! The SmartPen records and links audio to what you write on special 'dot' paper. Then you just touch the pen tip to whatever was written, and the linked audio plays back though the pen’s speaker or plug-in earphones. The power of the SmartPen lies in it’s ability to combine four ways of learning – reading, writing, speaking and listening – into a rechargable, take-anywhere package.

Thanks to the Livescribe Corporation, we are able to pilot the SmartPen in both middle schools and after-school learning environments. Middle school teachers in Louga, Senegal, are actively using the SmartPen as part of English, science, math, and geography instruction, as well as for student note-taking. I recently observed a math teacher who was using the Smartpen to explain the step-by-step logic behind a geometry exercise. I also observed students learning English by first sketching a car and then labeling the parts with an audio recording of the word (correct pronunciation and all!), and learning geography by drawing a map of Senegal and using the SmartPen to record audio commentary on the different geographic regions. It was amazing!

We are also using the SmartPen as part of an after-school program in partnership with the “10,000 Girls” initiaitve in Kaolack, Senegal. In this setting, it is the girls who, along with their after-school tutor, will define the best ways to use the SmartPen's capacity to enhance and make the most of their tutoring and peer-learning time.

In total, we have already started to pilot the SmartPen with over 120 students! Students are highly motivated to learn when the SmartPen is integrated into classroom instruction. Still, we believe that the real power of the SmartPen lies in it’s ability to individualize instruction. We also plan to use the SmartPen as a means for teachers to communicate with illiterate parents who might otherwise never engage in a school/home dialogue.

CyberSmart! Africa’s work in Louga, Senegal, is in partnership with The Millennium Villages Project and its urban counterpart, the Millennium Cities Initiative. Both are joint initiatives of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Millennium Promise and the United Nations Development Programme.

Read though our continuing postings about how CyberSmart! Africa is using the Livescribe Pulse SmartPen, and watch for videos that show the SmartPen in action!

Visit to Senegalese Ambassador to the United States, Fatou Danielle Diagne

"We provide an innovative and complementary approach to traditional school ICT initiatives where even the poorest schools can become 21stcentury schools."

This was our message to the new Senegalese Ambassador to the United States, Fatou Danielle DIAGNE. Jim Teicher, CyberSmart!Africa's Executive Director, traveled last week to the Senegalese Embassy in Washington, D.C., to welcome the new ambassador to the United States - she assumed her post just eight weeks ago, having formerly worked as Minister of Competitivity and Good Governance in Senegal. She has a keen interest in education initiatives, and told Jim that the CyberSmart! Africa initiative represents an innovative approach to learning. It complements existing efforts to provide Senegalese students with an up-to-date education -- critical to Senegal's competitiveness in the 21st century.

Smart Teachers in Leona

Having finished their training just a week earlier, the two middle school teachers who waited for us in Léona were extremely excited about showing us their progress. In the past two weeks, both Ndao (a seasoned math teacher) and Kane (a first-year English teacher) had already led 2 lessons each in which the SmartPen was integrated, and had each prepared one more for us to observe today.

After a quick and efficient distribution of the SmartPen kits by students, Kane began his English lesson, on prepositions and their usage. He instructed the students to use their SmartPens to record both the rules for each set of prepositions and also the example sentences he provided. A dot here, a word there, and 15 minutes later, the “delivery” of the lesson was completed. Now, in the practice portion of the lesson, the students were asked to take out their earphones, listen to the rules and examples in their work pairs, and create their own sentences using these prepositions.

Leaning toward one another and listening with a tightened face, students looked at first frustrated and then illuminated as they tapped on their “bookmark” dots – marking the beginning of a recording – again and again. Some pairs listened to the rule three times, and to the example sentences even four times, before going about their own sentence creations.

When the work period was completed, students were called on to share their sentences, and Kane wrote them on the board. Surprisingly, the sentences given were markedly different from the examples! Instead of substituting just one word, students changed at least half of the sentences they were given when creating their examples – a noticeable progress in an educational culture of dictation and repetition. Was it the oral component that permitted this evolution? Possibly. There is rarely an activity in middle school that favors the auditory student over the visual learner.

This lesson quickly coming to a close, Ndao stepped up to transition into math, with a lesson on calculating the absolute value of relative numbers. He deftly wrote a circle, two vertical slashes, and a square on the board, and wrote under them an “r,” a “p,” and a “s”; this was to be his way of communicating to the students when they should be r-ecording, p-ausing, and s-topping with their SmartPens. Wonderful!

After reviewing some SmartPen norms and symbols, such as any rule being started with the “bookmark” symbol of a circled R, Ndao picked up a piece of chalk and rapped on the record symbol, snapping a few students to attention. “Rule!” he declared, and the students tapped decisively on the record button at the bottom of their notebooks.

He stopped just after a few rules and dictated a series of three equations to the students, complete with plus, minus, parentheses, and all, and then instructed them to solve these equations using the calculators integrated into the SmartPen notebooks. Eagerly turning to the back of their notebooks and gingerly tapping on the printed keys, students took a little less than a minute to solve all three equations.

Of course, this was not enough for Ndao. As the use of the calculator in the classroom was rather new to the students, he felt the need to review its functions together as well. Calling up a timid girl to the blackboard, he asked her to repeat the process she had gone through on the calculator, using the calculator keypad he had just drawn on the board. She followed his lead and tapped away at the drawn number keys with a piece of chalk, as the rest of the class observed. Is it this one? Where do the parentheses go? And finally? Ndao coached her through.

“Now,” Ndao explained, “it’s time to find the rule. What happens when we add a positive number to a negative number? What about two positive numbers? What about two negative numbers? Look at your equations and their results to figure it out.”

And so, for once, the students were left on their own to deduce the rules. They stared at their three equations, the difference between them, and periodically tried out another equation on the calculators to test their theories. What a start of critical thinking! Slowly, hands began to raise with rules to suggest, but the deduction was not enough for Ndao, no. He wanted to work their oral skills, too!

“Who can say aloud the rule, for us all to record with our SmartPens?” he asked the sea of unsure faces in front of him. When no one volunteered, he picked a boy sitting up front. “What is the rule?”

Thinking frantically, holding his SmartPen, and darting glances at the scribbles on the notebook in front of him, he offered up a rule, aloud, gaining confidence with each word. “When … adding … two … positive numbers … the – the sum, the sum… will always? … be positive.”

“Correct!” Ndao congratulated him, “and very well explained. Who’s next?”

And so the other two rules of the day were offered up and recorded down with students and their SmartPens. The lesson ended in a fury of orally given equations for the students to solve in pairs and then check with the notebook calculator.

Sitting down to debrief with Kane and Ndour later, I asked them what they thought about their SmartPen-integrated lessons. They agreed that, without a doubt, the lessons are delivered more quickly, are more fun and motivate the students much more.

Kane explained that, when using the SmartPen to capture information, he can complete a lesson in two-thirds the time it would take him were he to dictate each rule and example in the traditional way. He delivers the information, students record it with their pens, and then they review and take notes at their own paces. So far, this approach has not had a negative impact on their ability to correctly answer questions and complete exercises in class.

The motivational level is also notably higher now: “Students who are late, or don’t do their homework, or can’t give correct answers in class are sent outside or sent home. And usually these students just don’t care,” they explained. “But when they’re part of the SmartPen class, they feel horrible being left out of an integrated lesson! And they work even harder the next day to make sure that they are able to stay in the classroom and use the fun pen.”

This motivation, and even a type of fame, has extended past the targeted 7^th grade classroom and into the entire school.

“Students in other grades tell us that they want to use the SmartPen! They ask us how and when they can get a chance to work with us and the pens in our classrooms. In fact, because we are the teachers heading up the project here in Léona, they’ve even given us a new nickname; now, people call us ‘Mister Smart’.”

Quite a compliment!

Implementing the Interactive Whiteboard: A First Step

I must admit, things started out less-than-stellar. When you’re working with technology, it’s bound to happen. Two teachers spent the first ten minutes of class overcoming technological difficulties. Throughout this time, the children led each other in songs, and later one of the teachers read a poem:

If the fish is a baby, the ocean is its mother.

If the athlete is a baby, the stadium is its mother.

If the student is a baby, the school is its mother.

The simple repetition of the lines, again and again, brought the students’ attention back to the classroom. How wonderful! Of course, M. Ndour, the leader of this, our first interactive whiteboard lesson in Senegal, is not new to education. He has been a “chalk-in-hand” teacher (as they say here) for the past 35 years. And now, in his 36^th year, he is setting down the chalk for a moment to pick up an infrarouge pen.

The lesson gets started with very little difficulty now, and the first activity in this reading lesson is to read the projected text, silently. Students’ unconscious mumbling fades off as they stare at the screen and its bright colors and clear words. A minute later, they are called back to attention by Mr. Ndour.

“What do you see here?” he asks the children. “What words are describing this pretty little room?”

Hands go up, one by one, and each student ventures an answer – “pretty!”, “little!,” “group?,” small!”

“Now,” Ndour instructed, “work in your groups to write down words that you don’t know. First work independently, and then talk with your group members to help define words that one of you may already know. Lions group, you’re together! And elephants, together! And antelope, together. And so on.”

Faithfully, the students turned downward toward their slates and began grinding their chalk away on a few new words from the text. As they finished, they looked up one by one at their group members, confused about this next step. Group work in third grade is a new concept for them. Should we talk aloud? they seemed to be saying to each other. We usually get in trouble for that, don't we?

And thus the work turned toward the front, as Ndour prepared to start calling on students. As soon as he held out the infrared pen, hands shot up into the air so fast that feet quickly left the ground for sheer inertia! “Monsieur, monsieur!” they started crying out, before Ndour could even ask a question.

“Now, listen and sit,” he reminded them patiently, “or you will not be able to use the new board.”

And so they sat, wiggling impatiently, and were called on individually to identify a word or circle a different part of the text they had just read. The class ended in yet another song, students’ voices echoing off the tin roof in anticipation of what was next.

This is the start of a developing pedagogy. The language is changing; there are group names now where there was nothing a week ago. New tools are being used and their significance understood; the infrared pen is recognized and its functions are already second-nature to the students. There are different and more developed pedagogical supports; the book page that they didn’t have a week ago is now there for all the class to see. It is not perfect, it’s not the summit, it’s not revolutionary material ready for the Apple convention – but it’s a first step, and a fantastic one at that.

Day 2: Simulations and Senior Teachers

The next day, the teachers arrived just as early, the buzz from the day before still ringing around the school courtyard, as they discussed the difficulties of the set-up and the potential for this tool in the classroom. We started the day with a screen-mounting relay race, and then a technology review, before continuing our explanation of the IWB set-up. We walked the teachers through the process, step by step, from linking the technological pieces all together with cords and Bluetooth, to starting the software, to using the infrared marker to navigate the screen.

There was visible frustration in the eyes of the older teachers, as they recognized the utility of the IWB but struggled to master its set-up. In discussion sessions, they were the first to bring up pedagogical concerns, shying away from confronting the technology, even in words. The saying “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” kept surfacing in my mind. Could we succeed in integrating a one-year-old tool into the classroom of a man who has been teaching for 35 years?

The senior teachers found their feet again when the morning class simulation started. Saliou was to lead a lesson, at the first-grade level, on spatial awareness and lateralization, to illustrate the integration of the IWB into geography lessons. To make the simulation more interesting and less passive for the teachers, they were each handed a student role card and instructed to play this part during the simulation. Roles varied from “talkative student” to “student who reacts without thinking” to “disengaged student” and even to “student with artistic tendancies.” After seeing and working with these types of students for years, if not decades, each teacher-turned-student played his role earnestly, and the simulation classroom quickly became a real-life challenge for trainer-turned-teacher Saliou!

Still, he was able to both manage the classroom and lead his activities. He started with physical body exercises and movement, staying away from the board and working with the students and the classroom space itself. Then, he moved on to spatial recognition on the IWB with drag-and-drop images, and then to the exploitation of a photo of himself, first back to the camera and then front, asking students to identify his left arm, right ear, etc. He wrapped up the lesson with a review, using a geography workbook page that had been scanned and projected for group completion – given the inexistence of hard copies in this, and just about any, classroom.

The afternoon consisted of workshops on integrating the IWB into each discipline, given its possibilities and limits. The teams were asked to explore the IWB further on their own and propose ways in which it could facilitate curriculum lessons, such as using scanned workbook pages, playing available math or science games as a class, annotating texts together, discussing images, etc. The discussions were rich with ideas, but the question that kept surfacing quietly was “do I really have to use this tool for that?” As any teacher presented with a new tool, they had difficulties discerning when the tool was helpful and when it was a burden. It is exactly this difficulty that often causes teachers to try their hardest to integrate, but then to quickly abandon the tool, discouraged, when it proves to be much more work and have much more limits than their plain old blackboard or paper and pencil. I was eager to open up this discussion, but would have to wait a little longer until all the teachers realized for themselves this limitation of IWB integration.

We ended this second day with an assignment. Given that one of the most basic uses of the IWB is to project images, for annotation or discussion, it was crucial that we know exactly what types of images would be most helpful for the teachers. So, we asked one group to work on creating an image “wishlist,” all of the images they would hope to have at their disposal, mostly from pop culture, to use in their classrooms. The other group was given a digital camera and told to gather images from the students’ daily lives that would be helpful to use in the classroom. Exhausted yet again, but already flashing the camera constantly, the teachers headed home to recuperate and to work on their homework.

The Marvels of Group Work

The first activity planned for this first day of training was something that was meant to help the participants, and us the trainers, understand what basic skills would be needed and where they all fell within that spectrum of competency. Broken up into two groups, each group was asked to create a Word document that presented its members, all the while following a list of Microsoft Word manipulations, from “minimize a window” to “remove the border of a photo.” Incredibly illustrating the power of group work, each team had decided to let the weakest member sit at the computer (attached to a projector so the others could follow along) and try to accomplish each task. Through their coaching and pointing, each member with a different ICT background and a slightly different suggestion, they worked through the construction of the document, and the necessary accompanying skills together.

Once back in the general group, the teachers showed a bit of fatigue – “that’s a lot to learn!”. While discussing the activity, though, it was clear that the main underlying message had sunk in.

“I had no idea that group work could be so beneficial to all its members!” said M. Fall. “They knew what I didn’t, and were able to help me along. And I, too, could tell them what I knew to contribute to the skills of the group, while learning from the others!”

This message was carried over en force in the rest of the day’s activities, which focused on the basic aspects of setting up and using the interactive whiteboard. After having seen the IWB set up in their classrooms for beta testing, they were all eager to know exactly how this magic worked. We started by asking the teams to assemble the PVC pipe screen, without further direction or hints, relying on their problem-solving ability and their attention to detail when the facilitator’s screen had been set up on the first day. Both teams took off running, again praising the glories of the power of group work, and minutes later they had their screens up.

Next, they took copious notes while our “magician” and pedagogical consultant Saliou began by introducing them to the technology involved, naming and describing the function of each component, from the Wiimote to the tripod to the connector cables. Then, as the energy grew weak and the day grew long, we ended this first day with an evaluation before sending our tired teachers home to rest. They had eagerly stayed until past 6:00pm, just to make sure that they completely understood the IWB set-up. They left for home in small groups, exhausted but talkative, and definitely ready to learn more.

Interactive Whiteboard in Practice: training 13 elementary school teachers on IWB integration

We rolled up to the school at about 8:15am, sure that the teachers would not be there until later. The training was supposed to start at 9:00, with a motivationally delicious breakfast, before an official opening at 9:30. What teacher in his right mind, on the first Monday of spring break, would show up early?

And yet, they did. There were already at least half of the training participants waiting for us at the school entrance when we arrived, smiles on their faces and arms ready to help us with our bags. And did we have bags! Our interactive whiteboard, while light, can get a bit cumbersome when there are three full sets and a week’s worth of stationary supplies. In they went, boxes after bags after buckets, into the school’s computer lab where our 4-day training, “Initiation to Integrating the Interactive Whiteboard into the Primary School Curriculum,” would be held.

A few coffees later, the opening ceremony – a time-honored tradition in Senegalese trainings – with a few words from the departmental deputy inspector of training in primary education. He talked about innovation, about potential, and about the necessity to make these concepts more than just words, but visible and concrete actions and results, that truly help to improve the quality of education in Senegal’s primary schools.

The inspector was right to put the emphasis on actions and results. In the history of the dozens of projects that have introduced ICT into Senegalese schools, there were very few visible actions, very few results, outside of the simple installation of outdated computer labs, or the gift of another technological advancement that soon became part of a school cabinet’s “museum of unused technology.” Our approach is markedly different: we are not just supplying schools with technology, nor are we setting up a large ICT infrastructure like a computer lab and leaving it be. We are looking to integrate this technology directly into what is already being taught, to support the national curriculum and the teachers responsible for teaching it, to make sure that technology is a help rather than a burden in the classroom, and in the process, to expose young children, in all of their tremendous learning capacities, to these tools of the 21^st century. And, to succeed in this, we will be constantly supporting the teachers with capacity-building and feedback activities. Starting with this initial training.

Math in the Afternoon: our second IWB beta test

Our afternoon beta test took place in Sinthiou Mbadane, our ever-ready test school in a village on the outskirts of Mbour. The children should have had the afternoon off, but were asked to stay to participate in this test. After a quick lunch together, thanks to their school lunch program, we began the lesson.

Again with the first graders, we began the “Discovery of the number 11” lesson, but these children were even more intrigued by the interactive whiteboard. Other than the projector that the school had been using recently, they had not seen much technology in their short lives, and their exclamation of “television! television!” was definitely a positive sign of their motivation.

A bit unsure of what to expect from the village children, Saliou had planned to spend more time explaining how to use the pen, and especially how to drag-and-drop. But no need! Within just as little time as the city kids, these children were clicking, writing, and dragging as if it were second-nature. Eager to use the new and shiny board, they seemed determined as ever to not let its crazy “clicks” and “drags” stop them. Sometimes hesitant about the instructions, they relied on their classmates and on the panel of teachers in the back to repeat the French in Wolof, Pulaar, and Sereer before completing an activity together.

During one activity, the first child to participate at the board was then asked to hand the infrared marker to a classmate who would continue. As Saliou explained this instruction, first in French and then Wolof, the boy just stared at him. Hearing it again in Pulaar and Sereer, he smilied shyly and then openly as he scanned the class, made powerful by the decision that had been entrusted to him alone. A girl in front jumped out of her seat and sidled up to him, smiling and clicking her fingers in the air. “Me! Me!” she proclaimed and, with one last glance around, the boy handed her the marker and headed back to his seat, satisfied with his decision. What a radical change from the teacher-led classes! He, a mere student, got to choose a participant from his peers.

Ending the lesson once more with a game, the students clapped together when they accomplished the task at hand, and the kittens pounced happily off the screen. They were then released for the day, and quickly grabbed their backpacks and rice sacks to stream out of the door and rush home.

“Their parents will be getting an earful tonight!” the first-grade teacher laughed, watching the childrens’ faces, still lit up and dreamy, as they broke out in runs once in the courtyard. “I wonder what they’ll think about having a ‘big television’ at school!”

"And having a successful math class with attentive students in the afternoon?" the director breathed, as if the results had knocked his breath clear out of his lungs. "Now THAT's a feat!"

A first for West Africa! Beta testing our interactive whiteboard

There was excitement beyond belief when Saliou, our IWB pedagogical consultant, and I began to mount the screen in the principal’s office at Cheikh Mbaba Sow Elementary School in Mbour. The students were switching around between their daily classroom setting and another class, since the one outlet in their normal classroom was not working. After snapping on the last few bungee cords, Saliou called for two boys to carry the board over. They marched it across the sandy courtyard, in all its PVC and nylon glory, up the crumbling step to the new classroom, and in through the door. At the sight of this novel contraption, all the chatter in the class stopped. The 52 pairs of first grader eyes fixed on the mounted screen, not knowing what to anticipate next but certainly eager to find out.

“Bonjour les enfants!” Saliou announced, stepping into the room just after the screen entered. The students stood up, craned their necks to look at the 2+ meter man in front of them, and responded in unison “Bonjour madame” – the simple presence of a male visitor was already an unexpected change from the daily routine of this class, led by Madame Ba, a small, gentle teacher in her first year of teaching.

“Bonjour monsieur!” she called out from the back, and the children understood.

“Bonjour monsieur!” they called again, and then stopped when I entered. They were out of greetings, not sure what was appropriate for this pants-donning, fair-skinned person. They sat down, with the gentle thud thud thud of well-behaved students, and waited.

In the meantime, I had already rushed to the back of the screen with Saliou and was putting together the projector, Wiimote, and computer. A good 3 minutes later, and we were calibrating the screen, and then ready to start! I took my seat at the back of the class, along with the principal, the two first-grade teachers, and the two second-grade teachers, and waited for Saliou to start this history-making lesson.

When he asked the students to take out their counting sticks (whittled sticks from branches), the teachers’ excitement, building nervously until that moment, subsided. Why is he using sticks when there’s some colorful new machine? they seemed to ask themselves. Still, they watched attentively as he began his lesson , “Discovery of the number 11.”

After a few minutes lost to students’ shuffling their materials around, there were 52 - rather, 51 sets of counting materials in front of them on their table-benches: some had sticks, others soda caps or water bottle tops, and a few had large white gravel pieces. One confused girl up front hunched over her neighbor’s bottle tops, her set of counting materials missing.

“Who can count to 10 for me?” Saliou asked, and all hands shot up in the air. “Madame, madame!” we heard again, as each child vied for the attention of the teacher, and hoped to be called upon to answer. He finally chose a timid girl in the corner, who counted her sticks one by one until she got to 10.

“Who else?” Saliou called, and the activity repeated itself. “Who can add two piles of sticks to get 10?” he requested, and again the hands shot up, waiting impatiently to be called upon. A boy up front divided his sticks between two hands, and then counted each one as he set them down lightly on the table space in front of him.

“Now, what if you had 10 sticks in one hand, and 1 stick in the other? How many would you have?” The children, already familiar with the number 11, responded in unison. From there, it was on to the semi-concrete phase, where 11 marks were drawn on each student’s small chalkboard, 10 circled together and then 1 circled next to it, the numbers were combined with the help of “number tags” under the circles. Classic teaching, classic materials, classic responses.

Then it was time to continue with the lesson, but now with the help of the interactive whiteboard.

Saliou took out an infrared marker, changed deftly to a blank annotation page, and wrote the number “8” on the screen in red. The children were amazed – and the teachers sitting next to me were as silent and speechless as if we’d just told them that we possess the ultimate secret to entering heaven. Saliou clicked on the eraser, erased his “8” with some deft sweeps of the marker, and then wrote it again.

“Now,” he pronounced quietly, “who would like to try?” Unlike before, the childrens’ hands stayed frozen in their laps or on the tables. They didn’t quite know what to make of this ghostwriting on a sheet. It looked like a television, but surely, you can’t write on the television, can you?

Slowly, a few hands were raised tentatively, about as many girls as boys, and Saliou chose little Mariama to come up.

“You hold the marker like this,” he explained, his giant hands overshadowing her miniature models as they held the marker together, “and then you touch this little red button when you want to start writing. When you’re done writing, you take your finger off the button.”

With Saliou’s hand still around hers, Mariama had enough confidence to try out this crazy new tool, and quickly circled the pen around to write a big red “8” on the board. Smiling, she shuffled her hand away, and went to sit down. Fifty-one pairs of eyes followed her, waiting to see what was next.

“Who else would like to try to write?” Saliou extended his second magical invitation. A few more hands went up before he chose a boy in a small, man-like boubou, who strutted up to the board and took charge of the marker. He raised himself on his tiptoes, but still barely made it to the bottom of the screen. Reaching high, and still not quite sure of the button, he made his “8” but then didn’t release, and a streak of red followed his hand as he lowered it. The class howled in amusement – that can’t be a number 8!

But, with two more tries, these unassisted, the children felt much more confident already, mastering as a group this crazy new blackboard, and so Saliou continued his lesson. As a trial, he opened the MathTrek 123 software to a preschool-level game called “Kittens Pleasure,” featuring toy store shelves filled with toy kittens. The object of the game was to take the kittens, one by one, from the shelves, to fill a box below with the number of kittens indicated. This would require for these 1st grade students, who have never used a computer before, to drag-and-drop objects on the screen. Could they do that?

After a simple explanation from Saliou – “hold the button down until the kitten is in the box, and then release” - the first participant was chosen and skipped up to the board. She confidently took the marker, and began hastily to drag-and-drop kittens from the shelf into the box, until she had quite a few more kittens than necessary! After another simple explanation, she began carefully drag-dropping kittens back on the shelf, and, with a cue from a classmate, clicked on the “Done” button on top.

“Congratulations!” the computerized bear game host proclaimed. “You’ve done a great job!” The students were excited – the bear congratulated them! As the game round came to a close with the kittens meowing and frolicking off the screen, the children laughed quietly and waited eagerly, almost twitching, to see what they would do next.

And the lesson continued with just as much ease and excitement. A PowerPoint slide with an incomplete number line was completed by students, a drag-and-drop activity putting stick symbols in circles was quickly understood and completed without error, and one last game of “Let’s Go Fishing” ended this digitized numerical lesson – the FIRST introduction of an interactive whiteboard in a West African elementary school outside of Dakar.

As the students filed out, each one jumping over the extension cord, the teachers stood up and cautiously approached the interactive whiteboard. “Can we really do this?” they asked. So we showed them, as we had done the children, how to hold the infrared pen and push the button, and soon they were doodling on the annotation board like inner-city taggers!

“Wow,” they breathed in unison. “We need to learn more.”

Social and Community Concerns

There is no lunch program here, which doesn’t pose a problem for the vast majority of students, as they simply walk home the few blocks to eat lunch with their families. In situations where the parents decided not to send them to the closest school but here instead, in hopes of a more quality education, not all of these students can make it all the way home for lunch – even more difficult for double utilization and double flux students who have a shorter lunch break. Other students forego lunch due to a situation of familial poverty, absentee parents, and various other socioeconomic difficulties, and too often come to school in the afternoon on an empty stomach.

“People prefer to help the rural areas,” Ndiaye explains, over the repetitive shouts of the Arabic class next door, “thinking that they face more problems than us in the urban centers. But they are wrong; we have problems, too.” Ndiaye has been working with the CODEC, the local pedagogical grouping, to set up a social commission, in order to first identify and then find ways to support children in difficult situations. He has already signaled, or learned from others, certain serious cases involving students that deserve attention, including a latchkey child with troublesome friends, a girl with mental issues who is not receiving the proper care, and the handful of students whose afternoon attention span and energy suffers from not having eaten lunch.

Being based in an urban center, Cheikh Mbaba Sow sees less cases of children without birth certificates, but it does have its fair share of parents who, with what they gain from their artisanal and commercial activities, cannot pay for the enrolment fees, or cannot purchase the necessary supplies for their children, from pens to books. Given that a part of the enrolment fees goes to cover the regular expenses of the school – water, electricity, a guard – late or non-existent fees put the school’s daily operations in danger. The school’s only recourse is to send the child home, as a “threat” to the parent to pay the fees, but such a measure is only temporary, rarely employed, and very rarely successful in obtaining the missing fees.

In addition, as a larger school with lots of traffic – not only from students, but from visitors on their way back from meetings at the Inspection next door – hygiene is a primary concern for the school. With the recent announcement of H1N1 arriving in Senegal, the director has requested more cleaning supplies. Without running water in the bathrooms, the school has a water basin they fill for washing hands. In addition, it is not easy to provide potable drinking water, uncontaminated by busy little hands, to the children. This means having drinking buckets, with bleach-treated water, and a cup in each classroom, although the unique cup is still shared throughout the group. So, recently, the staff has been encouraging parents even more to send their children to school with individual water thermoses.

Generally, challenges such as sensitizing parents, improving hygiene measures, collecting late fees, and exploring for additional funds to support the school would be taken up by the APE, the Association des Parent’s d’Elèves, similar to a Parent Teacher Association but with fiscal responsibilities and rights in the school. Regrettably, history has shown that the APE of Cheikh Mbaba Sow is too often focused on power struggles and political statements than it is on supporting the school. According to the director, the board members hold significant power in the community but do not want to act in favor of the school, leaving him searching for a strategy to work around them without displacing them. He’s still trying to narrow down the appropriate strategy, all the while lamenting the weak ties between his institution and the neighborhood surrounding it.

Welcome to Ecole Primaire Cheikh Mbaba Sow!

You enter through a small opening in the cement wall that surrounds the structure, just past the Inspection de l’Enseignement Primaire (IEP), the departmental head of elementary education. Once through the opening, most of the sounds and smells of this city center fade – the beeps and squeals, the shouts of ambulant vendors, the smog from the constant line of cars shuffling through this tourist and trader destination’s narrow main road.

There’s the school director’s office and the storage room/library right next to the entrance. Past that, the vast courtyard is dotted with ancient leafy trees and lined with blocks of faded yellow classrooms. At 8h05, the children were in their classrooms and the school director in his office, a punctual start to the day.

Of course, this has been the routine for the past 55 years, since the school’s pre-independence creation in 1955. Then, and for the 9 years following, it was a 4-classroom public school for girls, run by Mme Caroline Diop Faye (who later became the first woman Deputy at the National Assembly); the boy’s school was next door. Basic infrastructure has been in place since early on, with the latrines dating back to the 1960s, and water and electricity having been installed a little later. Today, this structure is a mixed public school, as are the ten or so elementary, middle, and high schools, all within a few blocks. M. Ndiaga Ndiaye arrived as the new director in 2007.

Comparatively, the school’s staffing and structure are rather impressive. There is the school director, a rotating substitute teacher, 2 Arabic teachers, and 11 “chalk-in-hand” active teachers for 11 classes of children. There should be more than enough space for the students in the 12 physical classrooms – but, in reality, there are only 10, and with a total of more than 600 students, 11 active teachers no longer seems sufficient. The lack of space means that certain students must trade off for the use of the classroom, in a system called double utilsation, as is the case of CM1, the first year of cours moyen (the 5th year of elementary school). Mr Diop and his students come on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Madame Kane and her students on Tuesday and Thursday, with Saturdays rotating between the two. A lack of teachers has led to the adoption of the double flux system for CE2, the second year of cours elementaire (4th grade), the result of having only one teacher assigned for 100 students in that grade level. The double flux system is similar to that of double utilisation, with the exception that both groups are taught by the same teacher, an exhausting task this year for Mr. Kane. Results of these adaptations? While an average student receives 29 hours of instruction per week, double utilisation and double flux classrooms only have 20 hours per week, the lack of instruction being clearly reflected in constantly lower-than-average test scores.

And Ndiaye recognizes that, despite these less-than-perfect conditions, some parents are keen to enroll their children in his school because of the number of experienced teachers. In this school that often welcomes interns and observers, the majority of its permanent teaching staff is made up of tenured teachers who have completed at least 5 years and passed a teaching exam in elementary school instruction. With experience closely related to successful teaching and student results, for many parents, they will do what they can to send their children to Cheikh Mbaba Sow, even if that means paying for transportation to and from the school or expecting their children to go without lunch twice a week.