Training Day: 1

After a slight delay, our first MELISSA session of the year kicked off at a primary school in Langa township, Cape Town on Wednesday. Teachers were excited and were keen to learn new things. This year's module focuses more on ICT as a teaching aide, and our participants are eager to see how they can implement communication technologies in its variety of uses. For the first time since its inception, the training was presented to volunteers - those educators that really had the time and the enthusiasm for the course. We understand that the teaching profession is a challenging one,  and it thus becomes improbable for everyone to partake. That said, the 13 volunteers seem to be a resourceful group of individuals, and we look forward to bringing them all - figuratively speaking! - the net has to offer.

We started the session off with a brief introduction, moving on to the research questionnaires. These give us a good indication of where teachers position themselves in terms of ICT capability. Getting on the net - via Internet Explorer - and browsing to the Moodle site to fill out the questionnaires, took some time. But this is a good little experience for participants, since they have to acquaint themselves with the basics - address bar, hyperlinking, browsing, scrolling - before we can move on. The activity was rounded off with viewing two videos about ICT in Africa. This was met with several technical issues, i.e. the uploading of AVI files and the use of headphones (which are not all in working condition). And this summed up the first training session!

In retrospect, we have to take heed of the fact that sessions will be much slower than we can always anticipate. Because most of these educators are digital 'immigrants' ...or even 'foreigners', they need lots of time and practice before they will feel they've 'accomplished' each respective activity. Some move slower than others, but this is natural. It is up to the facilitators to adapt. Overall, the session went reasonably well, and the only limitation is that of time. Tomorrow we bring you the second day, keep checking in!