Then another issue arose quite quickly - assessment. Once I started responding to student work in a readerly fashion and participating as a contributor, reader, and not just an evaluator, I realized that it would be unfair to the students to reduce all their rich interactions and complex online presence to a B+ or a 13/15. I realized that I needed to develop an assessment strategy that would take into account the complexity of student interactions online and recognize the process as much as the final product.

The students themselves helped me arrive at this realization. Only two days after I asked the students to compose a written response to the work we had covered, they began to use their blogs not only to brainstorm but also to request feedback from their peers and engage them in discussions about the work they were doing for this assignment. The assignment itself gave my students a lot of freedom - they could compose a personal reflection, an essay, a narrative account of their engagement with the material, or even a creative response in the form of a short story or a collection of poems. Two days after we discussed this task in class, I noticed that they turned to the class community for help. What follows is a list of individual blog entry titles that I found in the class community two days after the task was assigned:

Here’s my plan - could you comment?

Work in progress. Please comment everyone.

Rough draft. Comments would be greatly appreciated.

My essay unfolds … any thoughts?

Thesis improved (again). Tell me what you think.

Essay … it’s coming along. Pls post ideas and suggestions.

Improved introduction (after some comments and suggestions)

New and much improved planning post - expecting comments. Thanks.

I was very impressed - the students had turned to the community of their peers to request feedback. Then, I realized that none of the children asked me for feedback. It didn’t take long to realize that, a) they didn’t see me as a contributor in the community, and b) they associated me with corrections and grades. At this stage, they were not ready for corrections yet - they were simply interested in having conversations about their ideas. They needed somebody to talk to and, as their teacher, I was not at the top of their list.

Hardly surprising, I know. But this experience helped me realize that we don’t spend enough time providing feedback for our students and that most of what teachers consider teaching and assessment consists of marking and correcting student work. This kind of practice does not engage our students in those rich interactive processes of talking about their work and their ideas.

Initially, my role as a teacher was limited to first presenting the material (and engaging the students by initiating conversations) and then marking their work. I was absent from that rich part that happened in the middle where the students continued our classroom conversations online by brainstorming on their blogs, requesting and providing feedback, and engaging in conversations about some of the key ideas in the course. Instead of engaging with them, I just waited for them to submit their work.

As my research continued, however, I realized that I needed to spend more time with them in the community that we had created together. I needed to not only give them the freedom to interact online but also support them as they engaged in virtual conversations about their work and posted planning/brainstorming entries. That complex and interactive process of knowledge building (represented by the middle square in the diagram above) required more of my involvement. It offered a great opportunity to support student learning and to learn more about the students as learners and individuals.

Unfortunately, teachers often don’t know how to participate in that process and tend to focus on assessing the finished product. They tend to concentrate on the two areas in the diagram above where their roles are clearly defined. They focus on presenting content and then evaluating the quality of student responses to assigned tasks. These roles represent familiar territory, but they fail to take into account that teaching, learning, and assessment are interrelated. The problem with limiting ourselves to teaching and evaluating is that these roles alone ignore the potential to initiate and sustain rich interactions with knowledge. They ignore the opportunity to support our students as learners.

These traditional roles of provider and evaluator also reinforce the hierarchical relationship between teacher and student. However, a teacher who enters a community of independent learners/writers/researchers to support and encourage student learning removes that hierarchical structure and encourages students to become more involved in the assessment process. Assessment in this situation can become more collaborative because the teacher and the student have opportunities to discuss/co-construct the task itself, the criteria, the process of learning.

Annabel (SL: Annabel Recreant) has been busy creating a very unique project. As a teacher of history, she is interested in creating a virtual learning space where visitors can learn about “settlement / colonisation in the south east of Australia.” Specifically, she is interested in creating a space where students can explore and experience “the impact that colonisation had upon indigenous communities in Australia.”

Annabel wants to create a space where the students can interact with the virtual land, where they experience the life of early settlers:

My idea is that when someone first visited the site they would be faced with a simulation of the Australian bush as it appeared pre settlement. Uncleared. Perhaps with evidence of Indigenous inhabitants. Features of the natural landscape.

Visitors may have read documents in class (hence the working with not around) or read some of the documents provided in another part of the space regarding elements of Frontier life such as the process of settling on a new land, difficulties faced, the ways these were solved (if at all) etc.

Once armed with some of this foreknowledge, visitors would be invited to clear the land themselves taking into account the topography, geography and physical elements of the landscape. Provided with a ‘box’ visitors would be invited to build their own hut, or settlement.

What I like about her project is that Annabel wants her virtual learning space to be a place where the visitors can build and create, not just view, watch, or listen to whatever has been prepared for them. She wants the visitors to not just read about early settlers in Australia but also to interact with the virtual landscape, to make it their own and, in the process, learn about issues faced by settlers. This idea emerged from some very critical questions about the educational potential of Second Life:

[...] I think I became a little disengaged at the end of last year with Second Life … because I had reached a ‘now what?’ stage. Having been part of the community of learners on the Islands of Jokaydia was great, but personally I felt I had plateaued in what I could offer or do. More than that I think I started to find it difficult to see the other uses of Second Life other than that main one of being connected to a network of great teachers.

[...] what I began to obsess over was this: if anyone came to my plot .. why would they? Why would they come into Second Life merely to click on a few urls that would take them to the internet? To me, that wasn;t a good use of the platform.

To me, the problem Annabel describes here has always been a major weakness of how Second Life is used in education. It is often a place where artifacts are built for visitors and where mere reproductions of real-life lecture halls are quite common. Annabel wants to use Second Life as a place where students can build their own understanding while (virtually) building a homestead and clearing the land. She wants to engage visitors by providing them with primary and secondary sources that will then enable them to make well-informed decisions as virtual settlers. Her virtual classroom will never really be finished - it will be more of an empty canvas where visitors can construct their vision of early settler life.

Annabel envisions this project as an opportunity to show other educators how students can be encouraged to use virtual environments such as Second Life to build their own understanding of history so that it becomes visible to anyone who visits the virtual space. This is not going to be just about building a virtual space where students can click on some URLs and read secondary sources. Annabel wants to develop a virtual resource to engage students in Historical Thinking by providing them with resources they can consult and artifacts they can use to build their own understanding of history. It’s almost like creating a virtual world wiki where instead of being confronted with a carefully designed space, a student is given access to a variety of resources and tools to build that space and, in the process, demonstrate his or her understanding of the material. The wonderful part about this is that this process will make learning visible in 3D. A student who builds with the resources provided in this virtual space and by using her own understanding of the time period will create an artifact that other learners can explore, interact with, and also rebuild or redesign.

I hope that you will follow Annabel’s work by reading her blog, checking out the Virtual Classroom Project Flickr group, and exploring her work inworld.

Heard while driving home from Tess’s basketball game earlier.

“But Dad, I’m the only one in my class who doesn’t have a cell phone.”

“I know Sweetie, but that’s not a great reason for getting one.”

“But Dad, it’s like embarassing.”

“I’m sorry Tess, really. Mom and I will talk about it again, but for now…”

“Ugh.”

Silence for a few minutes.

“So, anything happen at school today?”

“No.”

“Nothing?”

“Ugh. We got a writing assignment.”

“A writing assignment? What kind?”

“We’re learning persuasive essays.”

“Persuasive essays? Well that’s kind of appropriate.”

“Like, what do you mean?”

“Well, don’t you have something you want to persuade me to do?”

She looks at me and smiles. “Cell phone!” Pause. “Ugh.”

“What?”

“I can’t do it on cell phones.”

“Why not?”

“Because our teacher said we should focus on things we’re really interested in.”

“Aren’t you interested in getting a cell phone?”

“No. Well, yes … but this is … different. I wanna write about sharks.”

“Makes sense. You know a lot about them. But how would you make your essay persuasive?”

“People are prejudiced against sharks. Everyone thinks sharks are bloodthirsty, violent creatures. It’s not true. Not all of them are … and they can work together, too. I wanna write about that.”

“And your teacher said yes?”

“She did, and … get this, she said I could interview this expert on sharks from the University of …  uhm, I forget. But she is a researcher and an expert on sharks.”

“Is … she coming to do a talk at school?”

“No, dad. I will be meeting with her online, and with some other researchers that work with her.”

“Online? Just you? What about other kids?”

“They have other topics, so they’re working with other people.”

“Online?”

“Yes, online.”

“So, you’re going to find out more about sharks from this researcher in … where is she again?”

“Somewhere in California, I think … yes, she has a blog and some of her research is also online. She posted movies from her previous research trips on YouTube … we’re chatting tomorrow during class.”

“That’s soon!”

“We have to meet this week. She’s leaving for a research expedition, for two months …”

“… so you won’t be able to get in touch with her after she leaves.”

“Well, she’ll be sending updates to her lab from her cell phone … I guess her assistant could email them to me.”

“… or you could get your own cell phone.”

“Exactly!”

Paulo Freire always claimed that we should use our imagination to reframe our reality - to see beyond that which we find oppressing. This re-working of Will’s conversation is my attempt to imagine a better classroom and to emphasize that what teachers need today - and more today than at any time in the past - is imagination.

As I read and re-read this document I kept returning to its final section, “Conclusions and Implications.” The final heading in this section struck a chord because it closely aligns with my doctoral research study and my current interest in assessment. The authors of the study state:

We see peer-based learning in networked publics … in these settings, the focus of learning and engagement is not defined by institutional accountabilities but rather emerges from kids’ interests and everyday social communication (Ito, Horst, Bittani, et al., 2008, p.38).

The study then goes on to state that “peers are an important driver of learning” (p.39) - not a revolutionary statement by any means, but important here in the light of what follows:

When these peer negotiations occur in a context of public scrutiny, youth are motivated to develop their identities and reputations through these peer-based networks, exchanging comments and links and jockeying for visibility. These efforts at gaining recognition are directed at a network of respected peers rather than formal evaluations of teachers or tests (p.39).

It’s not surprising that interactions with peers and even adults in an interest-driven community are more engaging and more fulfilling than traditional classrooms where teachers and their textbooks and tests are often presented as more important than independent thinking and personal growth. Motivation emerges from interactions that take place online where anyone can see and participate in them. This “context of public scrutiny” is of great importance here. The safety of the self-contained classroom, one separated (by walls and firewalls) from the rest of the world - the world we are supposed to prepare our students for - goes against everything that surrounds young people today and prevents them from learning how to navigate the complex online world. Instead of separating our students from the world they’re getting ready for, instead of cocooning them in protected classrooms, we need to give them opportunities to learn from and with people who share their passions. We need to give them access to communities “where they can find role models, recognition, friends, and collaborators who are co-participants in the journey of growing up in a digital age” (p.39).

What this means to me is that we need to seriously re-think not only our classrooms (we’ve known that for a while), but also, more importantly, our assessment and evaluation practices.

According to the report, we need to give our students access to “passionate hobbyists and creators” who share their work and passion in interest-driven communities, and who are valuable educationally because “youth see them as experienced peers, not people with authority over them”(p.39). Clearly, reducing access to these communities and the interactions they afford to letter or percentage grades is going to make our practices not only irrelevant but also, frankly, irresponsible. Opening up our classrooms to allow interest-driven interactions with people who “are not authority figures responsible for assessing kids’ competence, but are rather what Dilan Mahendran has called ‘co-conspirators’” (p.39) means that we have to start thinking very seriously about preparing our students for these interactions and helping them reflect on and learn from them.

How do we do it?

Some suggest that the tools teens embrace outside of school need to play a more prominent role in the classroom. Yes, these tools can help promote meaningful interactions, self-expression, and reflection. But let’s not forget that merely bringing Web 2.0 tools into the classroom misses the point. Yes, they do promote peer-based interactions and self-expression. But adding blogging or wikis or even global collaborative projects to our curricula is not going to magically transform our static classrooms into interest-driven communities, and it certainly is not going to prepare the students to safely and effectively navigate “networked publics” (Ito, Horst, Bittani, et al., 2008, p.8). These tools are not going to magically create interest-driven communities. I have visited eight classrooms over the past four months, and in all but one I was shown both a class blogging community (or an online collaborative project) and also a list of teacher-generated prompts or assignments to be completed by each student for that very project. Will Richardson once referred to this as “assigned blogging” and, let me assure you, the phenomenon is alive and well.

I don’t mean to say that there is no point in bringing technology into our classrooms. No, we have the responsibility to help our students learn how to effectively and safely use these new tools to extend and share their knowledge, make competent decisions, navigate “networked publics”, and connect with those whose experiences can enrich their lives and their understanding of things they are passionate about. Our students need places where they can learn how to safely construct their online identities. They need to practice and acquire new media literacies. But the mere presence of technology in our classrooms is not going to help our students acquire these new literacies. Neither will using them to complete teacher-generated assignments. We have the responsibility to open up our walls and show our students that we want their passions and interests to grow beyond our physical classrooms, our class blogs, our textbooks, and our lesson plans. We also need to show them how to do it safely. It’s time to reach beyond what we traditionally mean when we use the word “school.”

But when our students reach beyond our classroom walls - even if it is with our permission or encouragement - we’re not quite sure what to do. We stand there a bit sheepish, and we start thinking how to fit what they’re doing into the course curriculum. How do we justify that brave act of opening our classroom walls? More importantly, how do we grade what the students have done? As Michael Wesch recently argued,

All of this vexes traditional criteria for assessment and grades. This is the next frontier as we try to transform our learning environments. When I speak frankly with professors all over the world, I find that, like me, they often find themselves jury-rigging old assessment tools to serve the new needs brought into focus by a world of infinite information. Content is no longer king, but many of our tools have been habitually used to measure content recall. For example, I have often found myself writing content-based multiple-choice questions in a way that I hope will indicate that the student has mastered a new subjectivity or perspective. Of course, the results are not satisfactory. More importantly, these questions ask students to waste great amounts of mental energy memorizing content instead of exercising a new perspective in the pursuit of real and relevant questions (Wesch, 2009).

In other words, “the pursuit of real and relevant questions” is too complex for our rubrics, checklists, and multiple choice quizzes. I believe that it demands that we get involved as co-investigators who assist students with their independent research and who also, through personal engagement as online learners and collaborators, model what it means to be successful as a learner. We have to become “co-conspirators” or, to use Vygotsky’s famous term, “more capable peers,” whose job is not to measure and evaluate but, primarily, to promote and support reflection and analysis in our students. As educators, we need to work on our role in the classroom as “passionate hobbyists and creators,” we need to engage in learning in our classrooms, and in doing so we need to move towards a different model of assessment and evaluation.

“Become Students Again”

And that is precisely what I’m interested in - how do we redesign our outdated assessment and evaluation mechanisms to support our students as they venture outside of our classrooms and into interest-driven online communities?

I suggest that we follow and support our students. This isn’t just about granting them leave to learn from and with somebody else in some online community that we’ve approved. This is also about traveling with them, not to supervise or hold their hand, but to advise as more experienced peers - to explore, learn alongside them, and help them reflect on what they are learning. It’s about creating classrooms where, as Michael Wesch recently said, we can “become students again, pursuing questions we might have never imagined, joyfully learning right along with the others” (Wesch, 2009). We need to be there for them to show them how to learn. We need to show them that we’re learning too, online and off. We need to show them that we reflect and set goals. We need to model those processes and learn to support our students in these new environments and interactions. It is our responsibility to help our students understand that learning how to learn means acquiring “a collection of good learning practices … that encourage learners to be reflective, strategic, intentional, and collaborative” (James et al., 2007, p.28). Teaching our students, not as whole grades, not as classes, but as individuals, how to learn in the world where knowledge resides in webs, nodes, and multifaceted connections and correspondences is now our greatest responsibility.

Of course, the biggest question for me right now is: what does all of this look like in practice?

__________

Bibliography:

But in the process of building this exhibit, I also realized that it could be so much more than just a virtual gallery - it could become a learning environment, a place that anyone interested in education in Kenya could visit and explore. So, the initial virtual gallery idea quickly morphed into “unfinished …” - a project to build a virtual Kenyan classroom, a typical classroom in a typical rural school in Kenya.

Of course, some will say that I didn’t have to use Second Life, that a blog entry, a Flickr set, or a PowerPoint presentation (or maybe all of them combined) would have been just as effective. That’s why, before I began, I asked myself: What can I do in Second Life that I cannot do on the world wide web? Why do I need a multiuser virtual environment?

I wanted the visitors to be able to experience, even if only virtually, what it is like to stand in a typical rural Kenyan classroom. I can’t do that on my blog, but in Second Life I can create that classroom. I can try to re-create that environment. Of course, as a visitor to my classroom exhibit in Second Life, you won’t feel the fine Kenyan dust on the floor - the kind of dust that penetrates into everything in Kenya. You won’t be able to interact with Kenyan students or look through their notebooks. I cannot create tactile experiences in Second Life. What I can do, however, is create a visual experience that is very close to what I saw in Kenya. I can create a replica of a typical classroom and then use it as the setting for tours, presentations, or conversations about education in Kenya. I can create a virtual environment that provides a meaningful context for discussions about education in developing nations.

That environment wouldn’t be complete without photographs of children and school life that I took while in Kenya. You will find them scattered around the exhibit. You will see photographs of children and classrooms leaning against a virtual fence or the classroom wall.

Again, an argument could be made that all those pictures could have been shared on Flickr. True. I did share them on flickr, but as soon as I uploaded them I realized that they didn’t fully represent my experiences, that individual photographs, when placed against the white backdrop of a flickr photo page, lose their richness and become just another snapshot. In Second Life, however, I can create an environment for them, a context that will help the visitor see them as part of a larger story.

When building this virtual space, I tried to make the environment as reminiscent of the actual schools in Kenya as possible. Many of the textures I used for walls or corrugated iron panels were extracted from my own photographs of Kenyan schools and imported into Second Life. Before I built the desks for the virtual classroom, I scrutinized the pictures I took of student desks in Kenyan classrooms. Before building the classroom itself, I carefully analyzed my pictures of rural schools in Kenya.

Why “unfinished …”?

I chose this title because when I first walked into a classroom in rural Kenya, everything around me seemed … unfinished - the bare walls and gaping holes instead of windows all contributed to that impression. It seemed that the classrooms were still under construction. Of course, the sad truth is that the classrooms I visited were all finished - there simply isn’t enough money at many of the schools in Kenya to put in windows or buy new desks. There simply isn’t enough money to put plaster on the walls, buy bulletin boards, or put up posters.

Not every classroom in Kenya looks like the one I created in Second Life. Some schools are better equipped than others. Some classrooms have windows and plaster on walls instead of bare bricks. Some have new desks. Many have electricity. The classroom I built in Second Life, however, is not atypical of rural classrooms in Kenya. It represents rural schools and the country itself quite well. In Kenya, many things, including roads, schools, buildings, and public services, seem … unfinished.

The work that Teachers Without Borders - Canada has begun in Kenya is also unfinished. We had initiated great projects, worked with many teachers, and established valuable contacts with ministry officials and other NGOs. We look at these accomplishments as work in progress and an opportunity to continue to move towards our goals. One of those goals - and my goal for this virtual exhibit - is to raise awareness of some of the challenges faced by teachers, students, and administrators in developing nations.

I hope that you will take the time to walk through the exhibit and experience school life in a rural Kenyan classroom. The following link will take you into Second Life, to the island of jokaydia where the project is hosted: (SLurl to the Virtual Kenya Exhibit).

Virtual Kenya Project Machinima
(Link to the original file on blip.tv)

Interested in a Tour?

If you like what you see and would like to bring your students or colleagues into this space, or learn more about education in Kenya or the work of Teachers Without Borders - Canada, please feel free to contact me. I’ve given a number of tours already and would be happy to chat about the space or help you build a lesson around this virtual exhibit.

You may think that this problem is not unique to Kenya, that in many classrooms in wealthy developed nations students are also often uninterested in reading. I agree. As an English teacher in Canada I often struggled with this challenge in my classroom. However, in Kenya, this problem is compounded by some deep-rooted issues that have been part of the education system since Kenya gained independence in 1963.

First, almost all the students and teachers we came into contact with in the rural schools we visited speak English as their second or even third language. Yet, when teachers speak of encouraging a culture of reading, they invariably mean the culture of reading in English. In other words, they want to encourage a culture of reading in a language that students use very rarely outside the classroom.

Second, the Kenyan system of education is dominated by exams which play a crucial role in deciding the students’ future. Results obtained on these exams determine whether or not the student can move on to the next grade, to high school, or to post-secondary education. If the results are not high enough, the student is almost always left without options.

English as a Second/Third Language

Kiswahili and English are both taught in Kenyan schools. Kiswahili is the language of instruction in grades 1 through 3, while English is taught as a subject. In grade 4, English replaces Kiswahili as the language of instruction and Kiswahili is taught as a subject until grade 12. The language policy is bilingual, but from what we’ve observed some Kenyans are monolingual, some bilingual, and some multilingual. In other words, most of the children we observed and most of the teachers we worked with speak three languages: they speak their mother tongue (Kikuyu in the region we visited), Kiswahili, and also English. English is not the language you hear on the street in small towns and villages in rural Kenya. It is rarely used by the students outside of class time.

What this means in the classroom is that the mother tongue or Kiswahili are used quite often. Occasionally, even the teacher uses the mother tongue or Kiswahili to explain challenging concepts (personal observation; Muthwii, 2004). Also, when students converse with each other, both in class and outside instructional times, they very rarely use English. I observed this phenomenon in every elementary and secondary school we visited.

English is therefore seen in very pragmatic terms. It is used to obtain an education and write exams. As a result, students do not use colloquial English, and it could even be argued that in a country where English is often a third language, there are limited opportunities for them to do so. As Commeyras and Inyega argue, “their instruction in English typically lacks meaningful interactive use in meaningful contexts” (2007). English is not the language of social interaction. Code-switching is very common in instructional contexts. The use of Kiswahili or mother tongue among students outside of class is the norm. Voluntary reading in English is therefore rare because English is perceived as a tool used only to pass exams and secure employment (Commeyras & Inyega, 2007).

Exams

This lack of interest in English is greatly exacerbated by the fact that, in Kenya, students write exams at the end of every grade. They must pass that final exam to proceed to the next grade. They also write a cumulative exam at the end of elementary school (grade 8). Known as the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE), this exam determines whether or not the child will go on to secondary school and also the kind of secondary school he or she will attend. Then, at the end of high school, students write another exam, known as the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE). This exam determines whether or not the student can be considered for admission to a post-secondary institution.

If a child fails either one of the exams, her educational opportunities end. She will not proceed to high school or post-secondary education. She cannot try again. Her entire life depends on two hours at the end of grade eight or grade twelve.

Needless to say, reading and the use of English are associated with formal schooling. One uses the language to prepare for and pass exams. Reading and writing in English are perceived as skills that students need to develop to function successfully in school, not something that a student perceives as valuable (or even usable) outside the classroom in her community and in social contexts.

So What?

Imagine trying to build a culture of reading in English in a classroom where the students see English only as a means to an end. It’s a language they do not use in their daily lives outside of school. In fact, students in rural communities do not have many opportunities to practice the language in interactive and meaningful social contexts. This lack of what Commeyras and Inyega call “enabling environment” (2007) certainly contributes to the students’ perception that English is a tool one must master only in order to study and pass exams. It is not personally meaningful at all. English is predominantly the language of academic contexts.

One could argue that reading in English could help the students increase their chances of performing well on their exams. Unfortunately, the exams consist of fill in the blanks questions, and some multiple choice and short answer questions. They certainly do not require too much critical thinking. Rote memorization is quite sufficient.

Can Anything Be Done?

While I agree that it is challenging to encourage students to use English outside of school where they seem perfectly happy communicating in their mother tongue or Kiswahili, it is imperative that the use of English in school change from purely formal and transactional to more expressive, interactive, and socially meaningful. One of the main barriers that has traditionally made this shift impossible is that teaching in Kenya is very teacher-centred. In addition, instruction in an English classroom is often limited to cloze tests, reading comprehension exercises, and short answer questions. Students are generally not given opportunities to express their opinions or engage in class discussions or debates. Chalk and talk dominates classroom interactions.

But, how do we encourage teachers in Kenya to adopt a more student-centred approach? How can we support them in this shift to a more participatory environment?

I think that the small, gradual steps - the approach we used this past summer - are necessary to help teachers move out of their current comfort zone and test themselves using a different teaching methodology. According to Commeyras and Inyega (2007), two research-based Kenyan documents (MOEST, 2001; Willis, 1988) suggest that teachers can promote greater interest in reading by reading aloud to their students. Furthermore, talking with students about the texts as preparation for independent reading can also be very effective (Willis, 1988). Of course, the challenge here is that this approach requires that the teachers themselves be committed and enthusiastic readers willing to share their personal stories and reactions with their students. I believe that the students need to see in their teachers a high level of authentic engagement with a text in order to be encouraged by this approach. Teachers need to learn how to communicate their passion for reading and they need support in learning how to initiate and sustain meaningful conversations about texts in their classrooms. This is not an easy task for a teacher who is used to lecturing and who every day walks into a classroom where the students have been conditioned to sit quietly and listen.

I learned this past summer that creating a participatory environment in Kenya involves two steps:

1. Helping the teacher understand the value of the Socratic method and student voice in the classroom

2. Helping the teacher convey that value to students who have spent years in a teacher-centred system that rewards those who are quiet and equate learning with rote memorization.

The teachers who attended the TWB-Canada workshops in Kenya were very open to new ideas and most were very enthusiastic about creating a more student-centred environment in their classrooms. I look forward to meeting many of them again next summer and I plan to continue to work on encouraging independent reading and an open, participatory classroom culture.

Access to Reading Materials

The importance of independent reading has been addressed by the Kenyan Ministry of Education (MOEST, 2001). The ministry even listed a number of suggestions to encourage reading in Kenyan classrooms:

MOEST (2001) provides a variety of ways for encouraging students to read, including setting aside time each week to be used for reading in class; specifying the amount of reading to be done out of class and keeping a record to track the reading that the pupil has done; asking students to give oral reports of what they are reading; using resource persons to read to the pupils, modeling how they want the pupils to read; and rewarding effort made to read (Commeyras & Inyega, 2007).

The one barrier that still needs to be addressed, however, is the question of access. When we discuss independent reading in North America,  or in any developed nation, we don’t spend too much time thinking about access to appropriate materials. We take for granted that students have access to libraries, either in their schools or in the community. We know that their parents can also purchase books or magazines. Access to reading material is not an issue.

In Kenya, things are very different. Efforts to encourage independent reading will be pointless if the students have no access to reading materials. While some schools we visited in rural Kenya had small libraries or book collections, most did not have any reading material except textbooks. Consequently, another goal for our next project in Kenya is to help improve access to reading materials by fundraising for paperbacks or magazine subscriptions that can be purchased locally to eliminate shipping costs.

In short, as I begin to prepare for next year’s Teachers Without Borders workshops in Kenya, I think about how we can best assist Kenyan teachers in creating an environment in their classrooms where the students will be given opportunities to share their views, participate in debates, and use English in an expressive, creative way, not merely as a tool to help them fill in the blanks on a test. The teachers I met in Kenya were very open to making the kind of shift in their pedagogy that is required to ensure that their students have opportunities to move away from the formal and transactional uses of English and towards a more expressive and personal voice. At the same time, I realize that access to paperbacks and magazines will be crucial and I hope that, as a team, Teachers Without Borders - Canada will be able to raise enough funds to bring more books to Kenyan classrooms.

If you think you might be able to help, please let me know.

References:

Commeyras, M. & Inyega, H. (2007). An integrative review of teaching reading in Kenyan primary schools. Reading Research Quarterly, 42(2), 258-281.

Ministry of Education Science and Technology. (2001). Teaching and learning English in the primary classroom: English module. Nairobi: Jomo Kenyatta Foundation.

Muthwii, M. (2004). Language of instruction: A qualitative analysis of the perception of parents, pupils, and teachers among the Kalenjin in Kenya. Language, Culture, and Curriculum, 17, 15-32.

Willis, B.J. (1988). Aspects of the acquisition of orality and literacy in Kenyan primary school children (Kiswahili). Dissertation Abstracts International, 50, 433. (UMI No. 8908590).

Here’s a link to Karyn’s entry and to a version I annotated using Diigo.

Let’s start with South Africa, a country that is incomparably richer than Kenya, a country where quite often, apart from the times we spent in the townships, we felt like we were still in North America. It is a country of many contrasts and I feel privileged that I was able to get a glimpse into the part of South Africa that does not appear on postcards or in travel brochures. The part I’m referring to has been described by Robert Cohen in the latest issue of the Inroads magazine as one where

there is still a huge gap between the halves and the have-nots. Only now there are starting to be Blacks on the have side. Unemployment remains stuck at 25 per cent, not including people who have given up looking for work. An underclass is trapped in the “second economy” of subsistence agriculture, hawking, begging and crime [...]

Moreover, about 5.5 million South Africans are living with HIV … This includes 18.8 per cent of adults aged 15 to 49. With 1000 deaths a day, South Africa is home to the largest number of infected people on the whole planet. Among 15- to 24-year-old pregnant women, figures from antenatal clinics show rates around 30 per cent. A whole generation of orphans is being raised by grandparents, their parents dead of AIDS (Cohen, 2008).

Of course, this side of South Africa is not always very clear to those who visit the country to enjoy many of its breathtaking tourist attractions. Our team, however, worked in the townships outside of Cape Town where we soon became very well acquainted with the side of South Africa that tourists don’t often get to see. John Ehinger, my TWB colleague, explained this world of South African townships very well in his reflection posted on the TWB-Canada Ning site:

The two schools I worked in were in the Mitchell’s Plains and Guguletu Townships. As I learned, “Townships” are the shanty-town neighbourhoods of the black and coloured peoples in the country of South Africa. They are basically poor suburbs with shack-like homes composed of wood and tin (currently being ever-so-slowly upgraded to brick/stucco). The townships are usually within a long bus or train-ride of the major South African cities, where many of the inhabitants find work in the service and manufacturing sectors. The terms “black and coloured” still linger from the separateness that was legislated by the Apartheid Regime of the National Party in 1950 (lasting until 1994), and Apartheid still leaves its mark on the poor of this country, as there remains a distinction between being “white”, “coloured” or “black”.

[...]

But in 2008, times are slowly changing – improvements are being made, mostly due to the unshakable spirit of the people living in these neighbourhoods. Townships are being re-built by local families in conjunction with international NGOs such as Habitat For Humanity. Schools, while challenged by extremely large class-sizes and a host of other issues, are providing better and better education. Clean and safe drinking water and food are more readily available for those who have the money, and there is a burgeoning spirit of entrepreneurship that reminds me of home. Don’t get me wrong - the poverty here is palpable, and the crime-rate is alarming – but there is hope and energy.

We conducted two workshops with South African teachers - one in the township of Mitchell’s Plain (Glendale Secondary ) and one in the township of Gugulethu (Fezeka High School ). Here’s a summary of the workshops by the President of Teachers Without Borders - Canada , Noble Kelly :

Though some of these educators had had some exposure and workshops on computer use, they have not really made the transition into integrating technology across the curriculum or looked at the big picture of an implementation/use plan. As the workshops progressed, the teachers were excited to try many of the new Web 2.0 technologies and had productive discussions on developing a school wide plan for implementation as well as department and lesson level integration ideas.

An important outcome of the workshops was to get participants connected with other educators from South Africa and other countries to collaborate and grow. To that end, those who did not have emails were walked through the process and then we looked at creating an online professional development community with the use of wikis and blogs.

In other words, we focused on basic computer literacy skills (Microsoft Office, browsing, file and email management, editing images). In our other sessions, we focused on more advanced topics, such as blogging, wikis, and even Moodle. We concluded both workshops by focusing on teacher professional development.

As the member of the TWB team responsible for the professional development session , I wanted to focus on initiating and sustaining conversations that extend beyond school walls. Throughout the workshops, the South African teachers showed a lot of interest not just in expanding their ICT literacy and integration skills but also in learning about what teaching and learning are like in the developed world. They seemed very interested in getting a glimpse into what our classrooms are like and how we use Web 2.0 tools to engage students.

So, the focus of my session was on connecting with other teachers - those working outside of South Africa but also those who work in the same school or the same district. I wanted the teachers to see that the networks they can create locally can be just as meaningful, supportive, and valuable as conversations with people around the world. So, we shared with them some of the tools and platforms that we use to connect with each other . The response to this session was very enthusiastic. In fact, our surveys done at the end of our workshops show clearly that the teachers enjoyed and benefited from every one of our sessions - the ones on file management and the more advanced ones on Moodle and blogging.

In short, we have a lot to be proud of. And yet, I know that a lot still needs to be done. During my recent Skype conversation with Swallow Khume , a history teacher and ICT Coordinator at Fezeka High School , I found out that, in his opinion, the enthusiasm for ICT integration has fizzled out. He admitted that teachers have benefited immensely from our workshops and that many still feel empowered by what they have learned. So, we brainstormed how we can continue to encourage and support the teachers in his school and his district. We plan to offer some live professional development sessions (Swallow suggested Skype) - opportunities for teachers to connect, exchange ideas, and develop partnerships. It was good to hear that our workshops have made a difference - Swallow sees the potential at his school for a big shift and I am committed (and I know the other TWB members are too) to helping him support his teachers and build on the foundations that we have laid with our workshops in July.

But this will not be an easy task. While at Fezeka, I learned that access to technology is a challenge. The teachers were enthusiastic and very committed to their own professional development, but they all made it clear to us that ICT integration is not easy when the school has only 43 computers for its 1700 students and over 50 teachers. Using Web 2.0 tools is a challenge when Internet use at school is capped at, on average, 7 gigabytes per month. When this limit is reached in two weeks, the school has no Internet access for the rest of the month.

So, challenges do exist, but the work we have done in South Africa provided an important foundation and demystified teaching with technology. The school’s principal is committed to working out a computer lab schedule to ensure that more teachers and more classes have access to the lab. He is also thinking of raising enough funding to put one computer in most of the classrooms. He also wants to have a computer with an Internet connection in the staffroom. “The key,” he said to me at the end of our workshop, “is to ensure that teachers have easy access to the technology. If they do, they will feel more comfortable using it in their teaching.” I agree with him and am comforted by the fact that two organizations that were instrumental to our success in Cape Town, Edunova and Khanya , will continue to support the school in the area of ICT integration. I hope that they will also continue to provide Teachers Without Borders - Canada with their insights gained from working with local schools, administrators, and teachers.

When Noble Kelly reflected on the South African workshops , he said:

Overall, the workshops were well received and the participants were very excited to start using their newly acquired skills. They realize what a great resource they have and wanted to start using it to assist in engaging their students and enhancing learning and their own professional development. From our survey, 100% of participants indicated that they increased at least one level of proficiency in their skills and knowledge (a majority jumped at least two levels) and that they would like to see more of these types of workshops and for a longer duration.

I think our challenge now lies in ensuring that the support we provide does not end when the TWB team leaves the schools. I plan to be in close contact with the schools, the teachers, Edunova, and Khanya to ensure that there is a kind of networked support coming from a variety of nodes - teachers outside of South Africa, TWB members, and local organizations.

Whenever I think back on our South African workshops, I am reminded of a conversation I had with a teacher at Fezeka High School. When I asked if she found the workshop helpful, she said:

This workshop gave us a chance to focus on the technology for one week without any distractions. We’ve had computer training before, after school, but we had to also teach, so we couldn’t devote all our attention to this. This is very helpful. I hope we can have the time to continue to practice and that we have enough computers.

It is that sense of hope, a positive attitude, and a very strong belief that “education is key” that drive the country forward. Certainly, the teachers that we worked with all embody that attitude. I think they would all agree with the words of Robert Cohen when he writes that South Africa is

a new nation that is promising yet vulnerable, always inspirational but at time outrageous and almost maddening, impressive in the solidarity in its efforts to improve the lot of the people yet driven by the demons of its history. The challenges it will face are many and daunting. Yet on balance, as a work in progress, South Africa remains a beacon to the world. It has proven equal if not superior to comparable countries in its ability to resolve conflicts and manage its economy (Cohen, 2008).

I have seen those “demons of its history,” and I’ve seen the promise and the potential. What we have started this past summer is a work in progress. The focus now is to continue to build capacity by maintaining meaningful connections and raising funds and awareness to ensure that TWB-Canada can continue its vision of closing the education divide through teacher professional development and community education .

_________

References:

Filmed at Glendale Secondary School in Mitchell’s Plain, a township outside of Cape Town, South Africa. The Teachers Without Borders team conducted workshops on ICT integration and Web 2.0.

Final video of the Virtual Classroom Project hosted on the Islands of jokaydia in April and June, 2008. For more information about the project, click here.

Screenshots of the Virtual Classroom Project are available here.