CyberSmart!Africa 21st Century Learning Initiative

Guest Blog: Mr Diop, math/science teacher from Mbam

2011-05-27T02:20:00.000-07:00

"Le netbook, un outil incontournable"

Au CEM de Mbam (dans la région de Fatick, au Sénégal), le netbook a permis à des élèves de 3^ème, à partir d’un exposé sur le tectonique des plaques produit par 04 de leurs camarades, de comprendre en 2 heures ce qui n’était pas évident l’année dernière en 12 heures. L’impressionnant est que ces élèves ne savaient même pas allumer un ordinateur avant la venue du projet CyberSmart Africa au CEM. Et curieusement, ce sont ces élèves qui aujourd’hui sont allés chercher dans ces netbook des supports qui ont aidés à tous de maitriser le thème.

At the Mbam middle school(in the region of Fatick, Senegal), the netbook helped 9th grade students, starting with an expose on tectonic plates prepared by 4 of their fellow students, to understand in 2 hours what was not possible last year in 12 hours. What's most impressive is that these students didn't even know how to turn on a computer before CyberSmart Africa came to the middle school. And, curiously, it's these students who conducted the research in the netbook to find supporting information that helped all understand the theme.

C’est vrai que ces élèves avaient au début quelques difficultés techniques comme rechercher des informations, mais qu’ils ont fini par surmonter.

It's true that these students had some technical difficulties in the beginning, such as researching information, but they learned how to overcome them.

Moi, Mr Diop, professeur de maths/SVT au CEM de Mbam, mes collègues, et nos élèves remercions le projet et nous croyons aussi que la bonne utilisation du TBI avec le netbook peut permettre à l’éducation d’atteindre sa finalité.

I, Mr. Diop, math and science teacher at the Mbam middle school, our colleagues, and our students thank the project and we believe that the interactive whiteboard and the netbook can help substantially improve education.

Au passage, tout le CEM, par mon nom remercie de tout cœur l’équipe CyberSmart Africa et souhaite une bonne continuation a tous les écoles partenaires.

In addition, on behalf of the entire middle school, I would like to thank the CyberSmart Africa team and wish good luck to all their partner schools.

"Weekly Challenges": SMS Texting as a Professional Development Tool

2011-05-12T05:13:00.000-07:00

Our fairy tale of teacher professional development is a paradigm of the ongoing challenges that are faced by all who work to improve educational quality through professional development activities. The trainings and seminars are quality initiatives, well-meaning and good, but the work started there, the “educational magic” created, often does not continue, and the magic runs out.

In the cyber-savvy environment of developed countries, many schools and educational support structures are turning to the internet to support, or even replace, the exchanges that had, in the past, taken place only in the Land of Professional Development. Through interactive modules, teacher-led forums, virtual lesson-planning, and a plethora of other activities, teachers are given both the structured space and the ongoing opportunities to collaborate to improve their teaching and learning environments. The omnipresence of the internet means that the ‘net catches almost all teachers.

But here’s the tricky part: what about underdeveloped countries, where the internet is not available to everyone, where the ability to connect to the worldwide web is only practical in large cities, not in the small towns or villages where the majority live and learn? In Senegal, where CyberSmart Africa is undergoing our pilot project, “21^st Century Learning,” less than 15% of people 12 years of age and older use the Internet (ARTP, 2010). This number goes down to 5.5% in rural areas! The internet will continue to become more accessible, in all corners of the world, as time goes on, but what do we do in the meantime? How do we support these teachers, the ones who have just as many daily challenges as their urban counterparts, if not more? How do we make sure that the magic once made only in the Land of Teacher Professional Development is within their reach as well?

CyberSmart Africa has turned to the cell phone, the ubiquitous technological friend of Africa that has allowed Africans to connect with the world – from friends who live just a few villages over to their recently emigrated relatives in Europe. Every teacher has a cell phone, and he does his best to keep the battery charged and the number active, because it is his link to the world, wherever he may be teaching.

Our new program “Weekly Challenges” is based on SMS text exchanges between the CyberSmart team and our partner teachers. In an attempt to continue the collaboration and focused discussions that started during face-to-face professional development activities, we send out an SMS to teachers every Monday that describes a challenge to complete during the week. These challenges can be limited and immediate, such as a response to a question sent: “What software do you use the most in your classroom?” They can be more task-oriented: “Co-facilitate a technology-integrated lesson with a colleague this week.” Or, they can be larger challenges, that ask teachers to reflect, collaborate, prepare, and execute during that week: “Create a film with students and teachers that describes the school’s history.” The challenges are designed to support teachers in putting into practice what they have been learning, and to provide more direction and practice in difficult areas.

By the following Monday, the teachers communicate their level of participation in the challenge by text – challenge not tempted, challenge tempted but not completed, challenge completed – and are awarded points for their participation and for the quality of any resulting products, such as lesson plans, films, or write-ups. The friendly competition is truly motivating, and the sharing of products through group e-mails encourages those who have access to an internet connection to use it as a professional development tool.

In addition, teachers are given the liberty to work individually or in groups, but they quickly tend toward group work to minimize the time and maximize the output. They are all of a sudden constantly interacting with their colleagues to accomplish defined professional development tasks – just as in the Land of TPD!

So far, the Weekly Challenges have created pocketfuls of educational magic, which the teachers have been sprinkling around their active, 21^st century classrooms!

A Tale of Teacher Professional Development

2011-05-09T02:22:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, in the Land of Teacher Professional Development, there was held a delightful training for the teachers of all the surrounding lands. There were many teachers in this land, all of them good, teachers who worked hard and wanted to give their very best to their students. These teachers spent a few wonderful days together in the Land of TPD, working with each other and learning from each other, creating educational magic. This magic that they created together was so very valuable that, when the delightful training came to an end, and the teachers had to part ways, they all stuffed their pockets with handfuls of this educational magic to bring back with them. They then ran joyfully back to their lands, some north, some south, some east and some west, winding around and through for days and nights, pockets heavy with the magic but hearts light with possibility.

The next morning, these good teachers arose and went to their pockets, each to take out a little of the magic to bring with them to their schools. O the students will love this magic! they each thought as they scooped precious handfuls from their pockets into their school bags, and skipped off to school.

And the students did love the educational magic, they did! As the teachers ran around the classrooms, sprinkling their magic energetically in the air, they saw that the students were excited, and engaged, and were learning and participating like never before! The magic had done its trick, and the teachers felt happy and fulfilled. What a great time they had had in the Land of TPD! At the end of the day, they skipped home, grinning over their wonderful day.

The following morning, the teachers rose from their beds and went again to their pockets, again each taking out a little of the magic, and tucking it in their school bags. O how the students like this educational magic! they exclaimed, beginning the walk to school, motivated for yet another day of teaching with the magic.

And the students did like the magic, yes indeed, and reacted as the teachers circled the classroom, depositing small piles of it in the corners of the classroom. The students were attentive, and listening, and were learning and doing well, almost like the day before! The magic was still working, and the teachers were relieved for that. How wonderful that their time in the Land of TPD had produced such a nice thing! At the end of the day, they walked home, smiling over the usefulness of the magic.

The morning after that, the teachers rose once again, straight up with the sun, and headed for their pockets. They scooped out a little magic… But wait – the pockets were nearly empty! The magic had gone so fast! What were they to do with the little bit of magic that they had left? They trudged off to school to see what could be done.

As they began to teach that morning, each in his own classroom, north, east, south, and west, carefully setting the small pouch of remaining educational magic on the corners of their desks, the students did not seem so enthusiastic. But why not? The teachers were baffled; as long as there was some magic left, shouldn’t the students be happy and eager to learn? At the end of the day, they wandered home, frowning slightly over the seemingly uselessness of the remaining magic.

Finally, late at night, unable to sleep for fear of facing the students the next day without magic, one teacher, in a very far-off corner, summoned all of his strength and called out for help. His call wound around and through, went north, south, east and west, faster than the sun travels these same roads, and his fellow teachers awoke to his cry – “Help! I have no more magic!”

And each, upon hearing the message, shouted back in unison the same message: “We too are out of magic!”

And so, in hopes of creating more educational magic, the teachers made their way back to the Land of TPD. They worked together and learned from each other, and the magic was once again created, in abundance, and each eagerly stuffed his pockets with handfuls of magic, and ran around and through, for days and nights, until each arrived once again in his land.

The first day back with the magic was wonderful! But, once again, after three days, the magic ran out, and the teachers were discouraged. They called out in the night, and met again in the Land of TPD, and worked hard to create even more educational magic. And, once again, they greedily stuffed their pockets with the magic, and made the long journey, around and through, back to their lands.

Exhausted from the voyage, their first day back was dull and the students were bored, despite the educational magic the teachers had brought to the classroom from the Land of TPD. The second day was worse, and the third disastrous, until the magic ran out, and the teachers despaired. What could they do? They couldn’t go back, yet again, to the Land of TPD to create even more magic; they were too weak from going back and forth, and too discouraged at the thought of yet another voyage, yet another pocketful of magic, that was worthless after three days.

But what if they could work together, create magic together, without going to the Land of TPD? After all, it was working together, learning from each other, that created the magic every time! In fact, each night that a teacher called out to the others, the magic in all of their pockets grew just a little larger – they did not see this, were not looking at the magic then, were too worried, but it grew, it did. And what, too, of how they used the magic? Was this educational magic really magical when it was piled in the corners of the classroom, or sitting on the corners of their desks? Or did it need something more, was it the teachers’ energy, their skipping, their sprinkling of the magic throughout the classrooms, that made the magic so very magical?

World’s First Solar Powered Interactive Whiteboard Brings 21st Century Learning to Rural African Students

2011-02-21T02:15:00.000-08:00

USAID-supported initiative incorporates teacher training with technology strategies to help underserved schools off the electric grid

BERNARDSVILLE, N.J. and DAKAR, Senegal, February 10 – Ecole Sinthiou Mbadane1 lies off the electric grid. Yet this rural Senegalese elementary school is providing students with a unique learning opportunity with the help of a groundbreaking solar-powered interactive whiteboard, part of CyberSmart’s affordable solution to bring 21^st century learning to even the poorest schools in the world.

Recently, CyberSmart received a grant from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Senegal to implement its innovative learning solution to extend the Senegalese national curriculum in the areas of math, science, and social studies. CyberSmart will collaborate with teachers and experts to create and implement locally adapted training and lessons designed to spark a more active, real-world classroom experience.

"USAID is excited to be working with CyberSmart to pilot its innovative model offering a highly scalable, practical solution to impact the poorest schools in the world –traditionally underserved rural schools off the electric grid – with a 21st century education" said Kevin Mullally, Director of USAID/Senegal.

“Just as the mobile phone brings affordable communications to rural Africa, our vision for CyberSmart’s learning solution, which integrates mobile broadband, is to do the same for education. This provides hope for one-quarter of the world’s population – 1.5 billion people – who lack access to electricity and risk falling further behind the digital learning divide” said Jim Teicher, Director of CyberSmart.

CyberSmart’s patent-pending interactive whiteboard impacts hundreds of students in a single day as it is easily transported between classrooms. Its components – specifically designed for schools lacking basic infrastructure – require minimal electricity and can be powered by a low cost solar energy system.

With a “tech-lite” model at its core, CyberSmart flips the traditional economics associated with 21^st century learning, and focuses heavily on teacher training. This is accomplished by using less equipment, eliminating the need for infrastructure modifications, and by reducing ongoing costs. The result is an instructional shift where teachers learn to engage students with the learning skills most closely associated with success in today’s globalized workplace.

CyberSmart also works in partnership with The Earth Institute at Columbia University’s Millennium Villages and Millennium Cities projects, and started its work in Senegal in 2007, partnering with the Senegalese Ministry of Education.

Photos: http://bit.ly/g7GTjN

Website: http://www.cybersmartafrica.org

Contact: Jim Teicher

jim@cybersmart.org

1-908-221-1516

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

2010-09-22T05:18:00.000-07:00

PRNewsWire News Releases

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

Available Topic Expert(s): For information on the listed expert(s), click appropriate link.

http://www.profnetconnect.com/james_teicher

SOURCE CyberSmart Africa

Whole Class 21st Century Learning Works for Every School!

2010-06-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-06-21T03:17:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-06-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

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.

Follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/cybersmartafrica

Thanks, Livescribe!

2010-06-09T05:22:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

"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

2010-05-05T07:49:00.003-07:00

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

2010-05-04T01:46:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-16T06:21:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-14T02:04:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-12T04:48:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-31T05:02:00.000-07:00

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

2010-02-21T11:05:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-02-19T07:06:00.000-08:00

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.

Progress and the Future

2010-02-18T10:33:00.001-08:00

And yet, progress in this challenging environment continues to push forward. From 20-some students in 2000 to over 200 today, the school continues to grow. Ndour himself points out that, in comparison to schools built right after independence in 1960 and who still only have 3 or 4 classrooms, the Ecole Sinthiou Mbadane 1 has been very lucky. It has a relatively small average class size (around 36, compared to a national average of closer to 60), enough classrooms in which to teach, and only one split-level class currently. It also offers the entire 6-year elementary cycle, making it much easier for parents to continue to send their children to school – instead of trying to send them away to another village to study – and much more likely that the students will be able to receive a primary diploma. It has encouraging results on national tests; incredibly, 100% of students passed the primary school graduation test.

And, it has a future. Four members of its first graduating class, two girls and two boys, are preparing for the BFEM this year, the middle school graduation test, at the Zone Sud middle school about 4 km away. (The very creation of this school in a near location was thanks to more lobbying on the part of Sinthiou Mbadane, and a loan of their own classroom materials that are only now, 5 years later, being returned.) As the director and I continue to discuss the future of the community, we see a group of 6 girls, their matching middle school smocks proudly marking them as students, making their way through the fields back home, to Sinthiou Mbadane.

Obstacles to Education

2010-02-17T07:18:00.000-08:00

Still, one must recognize that this community, that has made so much progress in accepting and supporting formal education, continues to face obstacles, mainly in relation to their own cultural realities. For example, the villagers must compete more and more with parents from the urban fringe who are looking to enroll their children in the school. The urban advantage? These parents are in conformity with the requirements for enrolment as, unlike their rural counterparts, they are able to produce a birth certificate attesting to the legal identity and age of their children.

The parents of Sinthiou Mbadane, on the other hand, often welcomed their children into the world at home, or at a local health center, and never went through the process necessary to obtain a birth certificate. Now, if they want to claim the limited amounts of spots at the school for their children, they must go through a longer, more expensive process of an audience foraine to obtain proof of age certificates. The time and funds, and even the involvement of the director to vouch for the child’s age, is too constraining for many parents. Some fathers were recently spotted leaving their herds mid-day to collect and then sell firewood, all in hopes of being able to pay the 2,000fcfa (~USD5) for the process. While the director has had to make some tough decisions – in the beginning of this school year, he had the village choose which 60 out of the 100 students on the enrolment list would be able to attend – he does believe that, in the long run, strongly encouraging that parents get birth certificates for each child, which will then be their key to passing national exams, voting, applying for loans, and so many other advantages.

In the past few months, out of the roughly 60% of the students who did not have birth certificates, half have now obtained them, thanks to the audiences foraines and a great deal of support from their parents and the school director. Yet, even when – or if – the remaining children receive theirs, the battle is not over. During the first few years after the school became functional, there were more than 20 girls who left their studies to go start a family. In traditional Pulaar settings, giving girls in marriage at 10, 11, and 12 years of age is rather common and, once married, these girls are then expected to stay at home, tend to the chores, and have children.

While the number of girls leaving school for this reason has significantly reduced, girls’ education continues to be a challenge. Many of the girls who were part of these first groups to marry and leave school are often asked to give testimony to the importance of schooling. They explain to families who want to withdraw their girls that “if I could do it again, I’d stay in school” and “I really wish I had more of an education.” The women teachers association for girls empowerment, SCOFI (scolarisation des filles) has also been called in on occasion to discuss with families the importance of education for girls. After all these efforts, success is starting to become apparent in the numbers: out of the 48 students in their first year of school, CI, 31 of them are girls.

Particular, though, to the Pulaar community is the necessity to promote boys’ education as well. In this majority herding community, families need boys to take the cows out to graze – a task that is requiring further and longer trips as local grazing land is being sold by the government and exploited as farms or construction sites. There have been “mobile school” projects in other areas in the past that attempted to follow herding boys in order to provide them with an education – but, according to the school director, these projects have failed, rejected by the communities as out of place and unnecessary.

The movement of the parents themselves is another challenge facing the communities. Girls keep house, boys follow cows, and mothers and fathers move in rhythm with the weekly markets in order to sell milk and meat. Thus, parents are away from the household for almost all of the waking hours of the day, if not longer. Their involvement, then, in their children’s schoolwork and in any activities supporting the school is very limited.

The School's Birth and Growth

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It all started in a neighboring village where, one afternoon, a wandering French woman met a small girl of the village, who brought her to the girl’s uncle. The woman asked the uncle, “What would you like us to do to help you?” And, he responded, “We would like to have a school,” and thus began the literacy school, supported by the French woman with the help of an association. The literacy school lasted two years.

But something had awoken in the village about the importance of an education, and the village was ready to act for themselves. They formed a committee to visit the education inspector in the city and demand a school; in response, in November of 2000, M. Ndour arrived in Sinthiou Mbadane as the school director and teacher of the cours d’initiation, or CI, the first year of school. With him, came order and formality – students were expected to arrive to school on time and to be present regularly – and the sounds of the French language. (Growing up speaking only Pulaar, many children had enormous pronunciation difficulties in French.)

In 2001, a request from two neighboring villages for a school, where there was only an unused école communautaire de base, was responded by the regional Inspecteur (like an area superintendent) with a simple “send them to Sinthiou Mbadane’s school.” Ndour, however, could not accept so easily that two more villages would send him students without the necessary space or teachers being provided to accommodate them. And he made that very clear to the Inspecteur! Still, unable to turn down students, he taught a split level class of CI and CP, the cours préparatoire that year

The following year, Ndour prepared to teach CP and CE1, the first-level cours elémentaire, and M. Ka was sent to the school to teach a rotating class of CI students. What a fortuitous and exceptional gift he was! Ka, in fact, was raised in a family where formal education was not prized, even looked down on; throughout his youth, Ka’s father battled against the wishes of the family in order to continue to send him and his brothers to school. Now, teacher, Ka found himself in a conservative, traditional Pulaar community that, just as his family had, continues to struggle with the importance of allowing their children a formal education. Propped up by his own life story, Ka’s awareness-raising efforts with his new Pulaar neighbors resulted in an enormous growth in the school’s population as they enrolled more and more of their children.

The physical structure was also growing – having taught in a provisory structure for the first two years, finally three concrete classrooms were built in 2003, thanks to the help of a German couple that was put in contact with the school. In 2007, the government paid for the construction of another 2 classrooms, and the 6th classroom was built halfway by a French association in 2007/2008; the final touches, and the furniture, was completed little by little with the help of the teachers and parents’ contributions, and the occasional donor who, in hearing of the school’s predicament, would give a table-banc or two.

The teaching staff continued to grow as well, with M. Badiane and M. Cissé being sent to Sinthiou Mbadane in 2005, allowing for a full 6-year elementary cycle at the school, but requiring that each teacher take on split-level classes. This situation was unbearable for the staff, as they themselves were conscient of the reduced teaching hours and support, and thus lower success rates, of students in such classes. With encouragement from the teaching staff, Ndour stepped forward to teach a class as well – in addition to his responsibilities as school director. Ever since, evolving situations have never allowed for him to leave the classroom, even this year as one of their teachers was sent to teach elsewhere, without a replacement teacher being provided.

Complementary and infrastructure and side projects have developed alongside the classrooms and the staff size. A school lunch program was started in 2003 by a French artist who funded the program with proceeds from his painting sales. With the crisis of the past few years, he has all but stopped his contributions, but the school’s staff worked quickly to find another supporter. They understand that, although enrolment doubled when the program was started, without it, many students would either go hungry all afternoon or would not even come to school at all. There are two latrines on the edge of the courtyard, and a well was built a few years ago as well, along with a vegetable and fruit tree garden that is maintained by the school guard. Recently, a French woman gave a solar system to the school, allowing them to have electricity for evening revisions and to charge batteries for electronic devices.

Welcome to Ecole Primaire Sinthiou Mbadane 1!

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Fighting through the smog and traffic of peripheral Dakar, I set out on Monday afternoon to go spend some time with the teachers and students at Sinthiou Mbadane. The plan was to leave very early on Tuesday in order to be a part of the entire school day; unfortunately, plans never go exactly as one hopes here in Senegal, West Africa. The taxi driver who was to bring me to this rural school didn’t show up – not at 7h30, not at 8h00, not at 9h00, and still not at 10h00. So, with a quick call to Mounirou, the “head of public relations” at the school, I engaged another driver and we were on our way in minutes.

Of course, being on your way and arriving are two very different accomplishments! I began to wonder if we’d ever achieve the second as I stood next to the beat-up car, stuck for the second time in the sand, and watched horse and donkey-carts fly by with their passengers as a group of men continued to dig sand out from under the tires and then push with manly grunts. Maybe I should ask about a donkey cart for next time?, I thought.

But, soon enough, the driver had dropped me off in the courtyard of Sinthiou Mbadane 1, where Mounirou was waiting eagerly.

“I thought you’d never make it!” he exclaimed. I hadn’t been too sure myself, I confided to him.

The visit, as any visit in Senegal, started with rounds of greetings. We walked together to greet the teachers in their classrooms, often interrupting their lessons, tentatively peeking in until the teacher noticed us and loudly announced that we should enter. And then, the ritual standing of the children and shouted choral greetings of “Bonjour Madame! Bonjour Monsieur!” followed by a decisive thud as 60 pairs of young cheeks sat back down on their respective benches in unison.

Oddly enough, the school director was missing from the scene. Just as I was about to ask for an explanation, the small, puttering rumble of a mobilette grew louder, and the director made his entrance on top of it. He parked in front of the school kitchen, a small cemented space a few feet from the end classroom, and began to unload vegetables from the back, front, and even underside of his bike.

“Sorry I’m late!” he called to me. “I had to go to the market!”

This scene is atypical anywhere, yes; a school director missing on a Tuesday morning, then riding in on his mobilette, and then explaining that he was on a market run for the cafeteria. The explanation, however, was truly one of a kind. Since its creation about 5 years ago, the school lunch program had never missed a day, not a single day, where the students were not provided lunch – until yesterday, when a funeral in the neighboring village occupied the entire village – including the lunch crew, composed of 10 women rotating 2 at a time – and emptied the small local market of any produce or fish. Today, though, the director was determined to not let that situation repeat. He had found two women from a village on the opposite side of the school, and was obligated to take the only easily available means of transport, his mobilette, into town to pick up the lunch supplies at the market, a truly female-dominated scene.

Exceptional, the dedication of this school director, but so too are his staff and students. And, in fact, just as exceptional is the story of the school, which I learned from the director - when he had finished un-wedging carrots from between the exhaust pipe and seat.

Welcome to the 21st Century Learning Initiative's Blog!

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Here is where we will be updating you on the exciting things happening in the classrooms involved in this project!