Day 2: Simulations and Senior Teachers

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Marvels of Group Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Math in the Afternoon: our second IWB beta test

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

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

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

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

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

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

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