Tuesday, May 25, 2010

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.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

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 7th 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!

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

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 36th 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.