Increasing Teachers’ Digital Literacy Skills in South Africa

Goal: Continue building capacity to provide high quality education in the Kayamandi Township.

Background: The Kayamandi Township near Stellenbosch, 20 miles outside of Cape Town, South Africa. Kayamandi’s 35,000 residents live in an area of informal housing and historically have had low economic and educational opportunities.

Partner: In May 2017, Team4Tech volunteers from Adobe and Autodesk worked in partnership with the Greater Stellenbosch Development Trust, a nonprofit organization that aims to bridge material and cultural divides.

Project: In this third project Team4Tech volunteers worked to continue building capacity to provide high quality education in the Kayamandi Township by:

• Deepening teachers’ digital literacy skills and increased tech integration in the classrooms of Makupula High School. 
• Leading professional development training and coaching sessions with teachers, suggesting and modeling more project-based activities which foster 21st century skills. 
• Working with the teachers to create activities in their newly re-organized 21st Century Learning Lab and integrate them into daily instruction.

At the Vision Afrika Primary School, the volunteers:

• Scoped and piloted the integration of hands-on, STEM-based learning activities in the kindergarten through Grade 3 classrooms. 
• Adapted maker-space tools and activities to pilot a “mobile classroom,” which will make it easy for teachers to move hands-on learning projects from room to room.
• ★ This project was capped with an interactive all-school Tech Day event. ★