Teachers give Intel® Teach – Essentials Programme in South Africa the thumbs up.

Following on the success of the 2003 evaluation, we decided to conduct the 2004 evaluation as a case study at the Thanduyise High School in Ngwelezane Township just outside of Empangeni in Northern Kwazulu-Natal.

We began by interviewing the Intel® Teach – Essentials facilitator on his personal experience with the programme. He said that he had benefited a great deal. Before the programme, he was aware of computer skills but had never understood the benefit of using them in a teaching environment. He now fully understands their potential and feels spoilt to be able to use them. It has completely changed his approach to teaching.

Several educators explained to us how they are now applying the skills learnt from Intel® Teach – Essentials in their teaching environment. One has designed a special website for Grade 12 students, where he loads all his lessons so that they can go back to the content and review it at their own pace. It has been so successful that he is now working on a similar site for Grade 11 students. He says, “I am trying to present the information in a way that will help learners to remember, and they love it”.

A Grade 12 biology teacher utilised her skills and downloaded 3-D pictures from the internet of all the components of the cell. Before explaining the components, the students looked at the picture on the computer screen and were asked to identify the structural differences. This lesson was taken one step further when learners were required to do a project on the SARS disease by using the Internet for research information.

It seems educators across all the various subjects derived value from the programme. An economics teacher explained how his students were given an assignment where they had to look for information about the 3 key industries. They discovered many interesting facts that helped them to remember what they had learnt.

We also interviewed students from Thanduyise High School on what benefits computers offer in the classroom. One Grade 12 student said, “They are fast so we can cover more. We also don’t have lots of papers that can get lost. We can see things graphically on screen and we can also find information that we were not able to find before”.

This sentiment was seconded by the Grade 12 Economics learners. They were required to do a project on the budget speech and found a world of information on the Internet. “It was very interesting and we learnt so much. The Internet offered much more information than what is in the newspapers”.

When the Grade 11 learners were questioned following a lesson in which the educator used PowerPoint, one had this interesting insight, “We are not drowsy, the blackboard makes us drowsy. We concentrate more when we use computers”.

To round up our evaluation process, educators were asked to comment on the learner response to lessons using computers. They all agreed that the response had been positive and that using computers seemed to help learners to remember information far better. Some students could recall having seen it on the computer and could then remember the content.

In conclusion, one educator stated, “Computers help because you can spend more time actually teaching than writing on the board!!”

The Intel® Teach – Essentials programme in South Africa has been extremely successful, with 13 000 teachers already trained since its inception. We recently spoke to a number of Educators’ who took part in the programme in 2003 to ascertain their reasons for participation and whether they have derived value from the project.

One teacher felt that everything is changing in the world and that technology is constantly advancing. Intel® Teach – Essentials Programme is the right thing for his students as they have computers in their homes and want to work on things that involve them. Several other teachers re-enforced this viewpoint and added that everything is becoming increasingly more dependent on technology and that computers will become an integral part of teaching in the classroom.

Many teachers sited self development as an important factor. They felt strongly that the programme not only allows them to develop skills in information and communication technologies, but also to discover new ways of planning, preparing and presenting their lessons. They are, in turn, able to pass these valuable skills on to their students and encourage them to learn at their own pace.

When asked for general comments regarding the training, most teachers expressed gratitude and said that they found the programme to be extremely useful and educationally sound. One teacher also made specific mention of the facilitator and his excellent input.

Another commented, “Thank you for uplifting the standard of teaching in our schools. I wish it could be implemented in many schools so that we can have better learning in our country”.

The overall feedback from the teacher evaluations for 2003 was very positive. This statement from one participant sums up the value of the training, “At the beginning of training I was not very confident…. But now I AM VERY CONFIDENT! My PC skills improved so much, I was able to help others with problems that I had earlier in the week – thank you Intel”.