Submitted by Janet Thomson
A happy culmination to the Learning Gains through Play workshop recently took place with Western Cape teachers from Somerset West Methodist, Temperance Town, Nomsa Mapongwana, Christmas Tinto and Solomon Qatyana primary schools.
The workshop was facilitated by SchoolNet’s project manager, Hlengiwe Mfeka as well as Senzo Ngcobo, Tracey Butchart, and Themba Mabaso, and supported by the Metro East Department of Education officials Rodney Nissen, Sipho Didiza and Jaco Joseph.
The workshop was for teachers to brush up on their online skills including uploading media to earn project badges as well as media for their knowledge-sharing activities. The three knowledge-sharing activities contribute towards an open education resource – an anthology called, “LGP – Games to Develop Foundational Literacies: A Collection of Authentic Learning Briefs”. Each teacher selects a Kinect Game as well as a specific android app to try out in their classrooms and to evaluate. Teachers analyse the game/app in terms of teaching and learning opportunities for the CAPS foundational literacies that it affords. This publication will be available to share publicly at the end of the project in 2017.
For the video diary badge, teachers upload a video to the LGP website that illustrates play-driven and learner-centred activities that have worked well in their classrooms.
The third focus of yesterday’s workshop was the reflective journal. Teachers upload their thoughts about activities and lesson plans, explaining why they have chosen them. This takes the form of ‘Two Stars and a Wish’. The ‘two stars’ are offerings of two classroom lessons, activities or teaching moments that worked well. The ‘wish’ is for an activity that could have gone better or that the teacher wished she might have done differently. Teachers in the Western Cape as well as those on KZN are certainly now proficient at uploading videos to YouTube. “