Day 5: Visit to Apartheid museum

Final day at Spectrum Primary School.

We took a group of 24 students & 3 teachers to the Apartheid museum. The students were paired together and used one of their phones and a project phone (the project phones had their assignment on).

The assignment was to prepare a multimedia presentation on on of the following topics

Racial Classification	Detention
Forced Classification	Martyr
Segregation	Exile
Discrimination	Constitution
Boycott	Courage
Protest	Reconciliation

The students had to find the assignment on the project phone, take photos, video’s, write info found at the museum or ask people all ready for their multimedia presentation back at the school.

Unfortunately I’ll be back in the UK and won’t see the presentations.. I’ll have to wait for the final result from the Lucy & the students.

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Finally meet the lucky four students who are off to Washington DC on 9th May to present and meet officials from the White House!

M-Ubuntu is one of three projects to present and showcase the Mobile Learning project to White House officials who spearhead technology-assisted initiatives in the US.

Sthembiso Zuma, Leigh Mondell, Kirsten Goliath & Juzevan du Plessis – guys, you are making your school extremely proud of you!

- you never know, I may come & join you :-)

Day 4: Child Labour

Today the sun has been shining & no sign of the rain (erm yet)!

These Grade 5 students (10/11yrs old) shocked me today, not much can but they did. Their lessons were all about Child Labour.

 

Task 1 was to get into pairs with a phone and ask the question ‘What work do you do?’ They used the camcorder function on the phone to interview each other.

Task 2 was to look at the photos on the phones of children doing adult jobs. They had to analyse the pictures and discuss in groups.

Task 3 was to watch a short video on the phones of two child (13 & 14) prostitutes working in South Africa. It was a very emotional clip that Grade 5 were very mature about. We then discussed as a whole class how it made them feel & why it was wrong – they knew the physical & emotional effects. They knew what damage it would cause & to their health and education.

Final task was homework. To design a poster to ‘STOP CHILD LABOUR!’

Amazing day to match an ‘awesome’ week. Tomorrow we’re taking 20 students all kitted out with phones, flip camera to the Apartheid museum where we’ve set them some tasks to go towards their report back at school.

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Day 3: ‘Being clever’

Ok we got to be clever with these Grade 4 (9yrs old). Out of a class of 40 we worked with the teacher & 20 students over 2 periods (total 1hr).

Here’s their lesson plan:

‘Leopard is tricked’

This is a short story about how Leopard was to trick Goat but in turn Goat tricks Leopard. The aim of using the story was to get the students to understand…

We put an audio file of Leopard is tricked, pictures of leopards and goats and some multi-choice questions.

• On the phone, open the following files
• The pictures of the leopard and goat families.
• Listen to the story of Leopard and Goat in pairs
• The word document ‘Leopard and Goat questions. Answer the questions about the story of Leopard and Goat.

   

‘Riddles’

• On the phone, open the following ‘Riddles’ document and figure out each of the riddles. 
• For homework, write your own riddle poem. On one side write your riddle and on the other draw a picture of your answer.
• You can then in class type you riddle onto a word document on the phone and take a photo of the answer.
• Pass your riddle onto friends.

 

Think you can work out riddles….this one’s an easy one for ya

Boats sail on the rivers,
And ships sail on the seas;
There are bridges on the rivers,
As pretty as you please;
But the colorful bow that bridges heaven,
And overtops the trees,
And builds a road from earth to sky
Is prettier far than these.

Feedback from Tumi Khuzwayo, Grade 4 Head of English Dept

Day 2: Planning, prep, phones & ‘Blondie’

Planning for the future

From the teacher meeting yesterday and listening to the successes and the frustrations, a bit of time was spent planning/brainstorming the next steps for the M-Ubuntu project.

Ideas such as

• Setting up email accounts for the teachers – they can use the project laptop to send and receive emails, documents for their lessons
• Set up Skype accounts for them – cheap and easy way for them to call us (UK & USA)

We’re here this week

• to show the teachers how to run a lesson using phones
• to show technology/phones as a positive addition to the lesson
• to show it can be done without to much time and worry of how to mix the lesson up with a bit of blended learning.

Again, small steps are going to be needed as we have to deliver and help their needs without us getting too excited and adding too much to the mix if they aren’t ready.

Preparing for the lessons

Wednesday, grade 4: ‘Riddles’ & ‘Chimneys’

We have put some riddles on the devices for the students to read/listen to and then to work out the title. They’ll then have to draw or act out the riddle. The devices are more of an aid to the learning – make it more fun!

‘Chimneys’, we have made a video of Kevin (a friend of the son of the women I’m staying with :)) reading the poem then loaded onto the devices, the students will be split into groups and given a verse to read and act out to the rest of the group. Other students will film these parts and then we’ll join into a mini ‘movie’.

Thursday, Grade 5: child labor

All the activities take place using the phone

1. Find and view the pictures of children working
2. Listen to or read the story of the Little Match Girl.
3. As a group, answer the questions about the Little Match Girl
4. Listen to or read the newspaper story of Child Trafficking
5. Watch the video “Child Sex Workers”
6. Why is child labor bad? Share your ideas with your group
7. For homework, draw a Poster illustrating this message: 

Give Kids a Future: Stop Child Labor

Friday, Grade 6 & 7: Apartheid museum

Friday we are taking 20 children to the Apartheid museum. The students will be split into groups with a topic to go and investigate. They’ll take photos, videos, make notes all to be part of a report they’ll put together when back at school.

Phones

They are ready to go!

Blake our new ‘keeper of the devices’ has done a great job today making sure the phones are ready for our busy few days ahead ahead.

Blake has learnt today how to

• Make sure the phones are fully charged – tedious task but essential!
• Remove all content that doesn’t need to be on the phones i.e. photos, videos, word docs
• Set the ‘front screen’ of the phones to show the correct date, time, and a shortcut for the programs well be using,

Tomorrow I’ll show Blake

• How to set up a system to manage the devices
• How to add, remove content from computer to phones ready for the teachers to use.
• How to use the project laptop, Flip camera and projector.

‘Blondie’

For those who know me, you often shout ‘Oi Blondie’ well today I got the chance to shout Blondie!

Marianne, the lady I am staying with works in a cute little cafe in Ennerdale. Lucy & I decided to pay her a visit and have a house special – yip you got it ‘Blondie’ – it was AWESOME!

  

…and yes I ate it all! 3 slices of toast, burger, cheese, salad, chips, lots of spices and sauce – oh & egg but didn’t fancy that :)

Day 1: Spectrum Primary School – teacher training

After leaving the UK 12pm Sunday afternoon, I finally arrived at Spectrum Primary School for 9am ready to start work.

I met Lucy Haagen, Sam Nenngwekhulu (Principal) and 8 eager teachers who came in on their day off (public holiday).

The school had some experience of using the devices so we were on the next steps…

The first thing we asked was

• What do they feel are the successes of the M-Ubuntu project so far?

 

• What are their frustrations about the project so far?
  • Time, loading and preparing the devices
  • Memory of the devices was not very good
  • Availability of the devices – only 40 available to a school of 900

One solution we showed them, was how you can use memory cards (we brought over 20micro SD cards). By using these you don’t have to sync each device to a computer, you just can just copy/bluetooth the files to the SD card from the computer to the phone and away you go – time saving and using less phone memory – bingo.

We also discussed the ideas we had for lessons this week for Grade 4, 5, 6 & 7 students - they all seemed pleased with the plan.

Final note!

I can’t wait for the week ahead and work with these guys as they are a really enthusiastic bunch!

We even hooked up with other colleagues from Tribal who were at Bedford Academy giving an m-learning training session. That was really ‘awesome’ seeing (well hearing as one of us didn’t have a video camera :))two schools meet over Skype to share their experiences!

It's time to go back to South Africa!

On Sunday 25th April I will be flying out to Johannesburg to meet wit Lucy Haagen, an educator from Duke University. We will be visiting Spectrum Primary School. Spectrum has been involved in project m-ubuntu for quite a while now and it's going to be great seeing what they've been up to! South African Primary Schools win prestigious prize in the Digital Media Learning Competition in the US

Techy stuff used at SPS

So the school has…

• a room with 20 computers and wireless internet
• Wi-fi from the principles office (for teacher use only)
• lots of mobile phones
• laptop
• projector
• flip camera
• lots of SD cards & a couple of usb sticks

Some nice ingredients to make a really effective lesson.

The only problem we saw so far is that the wi-fi is down a majority of the time & because there is no IT support onsite sometimes the school has to wait before being able to use the internet with the students.

So to the devices - the functions we used on the phones were…

• Bluetooth
• Bluetooth was super cool for us to use since the phones do not have Sims in (stops the phone bills clocking up!)
• camera
• great for evidence gathering, helps the student discover a different learning style
• video
• These guys are interview experts!
• text editor
• Automatically the kids chose the phone to type notes & Bluetooth rather than using pen & paper
• & voice recorder
• used this to record poems - others can hear how they interpreted the poem