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into Senegalese schools, there were very few visible actions, very few results, outside of the simple installation of outdated computer labs, or the gift of another technological advancement that soon became part of a school cabinet’s “museum of unused technology.”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.