In a collaborative partnership with teacher unions, non-profit organisation (NPO) Tangible Africa has trained over 600 teachers across South Africa in coding skills to implement in the classroom.
The teachers, who were trained between June and September, are now known as Master Trainers, and in turn, will train around 16 000 other teachers in offline coding, the NPO says.
Leva Foundation operations manager Jackson Tshabalala says 500 South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), 40 National Teachers' Union (NATU) and 60 Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysersunie (SAOU) teachers were trained across all nine provinces in less than three months.
The training comes as government is looking to rollout a coding and robotics curriculum in South African schools.
The Department of Basic Education (DBE) believes a coding and robotics curriculum will develop learners’ ability to solve problems, think critically, work collaboratively and creatively, function in a digital and information-driven world, apply digital and ICT skills, and transfer these skills to solve everyday problems.
According to the DBE’s annual performance plan for 2022/2023, the full-scale implementation for Grade R to Grade 3, and Grade 7 is planned for the academic year 2023.
For other grades from 4 to 9, the subjects of robotics and coding will be on the pilot from 2022 to 2023, and full-scale implementation in these grades will be seen between 2024 and 2025.
Achievable coding
“This was a great collaboration between Tangible Africa and the teachers unions. The most rewarding part of the training was demystifying coding to some of the teachers who reported feelings of anxiety, fear and nervousness before the training, but afterwards felt encouraged, ready and excited to start coding at their schools,” says Tshabalala.
The training offered by 12 young facilitators from Tangible Africa, an engagement project of Nelson Mandela University Computing Sciences Department and the Leva Foundation, empowered the teachers to teach coding concepts without computers – by using limited resources, including a smartphone and coding app games (downloadable as TANKS, RANGERS and BOATS).
“This was also an empowering experience for our facilitators, who are mostly graduates from the university. They were able to share their technical skillset in a workshop setting, and for some of our facilitators it was their first time on a plane. The training allowed our facilitators to build up their capacity to offer future Unplugged Coding workshops to other organisations,” says Tshabalala.
SADTU vice-president of education Faseega Solomon says the project by Tangible Africa suited the Teacher Union Collaboration training earmarked for the year since it was themed “skills for a changing world”.
The annual training is a partnership between the major unions in the country and the DBE.
“What stood out from all the other service providers was that these coding concepts could be taught in schools without the necessary infrastructure and gadgets. Teachers will be able to develop skills needed for the 21st century, like problem-solving and collaboration, to empower learners irrespective of the resources they have available at their schools,” says Solomon.
She commends the Tangible Africa facilitators for being well-trained and presenting the training in a fun and interactive manner.
Tangible Africa says many of the Master Trainer teachers are now already implementing the training in their classrooms and receiving requests from other schools for further training. Solomon believes the training will not stop at the earmarked 16 000 teachers, but will reach even more schools to have a multiplying impact.
NATU director Prof Sitwala Imenda says by using the Master Trainer teachers to capacitate other teachers, it also removes the fear they have about these concepts: “When they see their colleagues handling the coding and robotics content, they are motivated. Furthermore, by using this cascading approach, instead of using private entities, we also achieve economies of both scale and skill.”
He continues to say the skills taught will assist learners and teachers not only in the technological world in which we live today, but also in the future. “By exposing educators of NATU to these concepts and principles, we seek to create a critical mass of teacher champions to imbue learners with skills for the future,” says Imenda.
Koos van der Walt, who co-ordinated the training of 60 SAOU teachers in the central region, agrees the coding concepts could be taught in both high resource and low resource schools.
“I haven’t seen teachers enjoy themselves this much during training in a long a time. They were eager to take the concepts back to the classroom and were extremely positive about the training,” says Van der Walt.
Thinking it through
Teachers who received the training were oriented to coding and robotics as a subject and encouraged to understand the thinking processes required from learners.
“Some of these things we are already doing in the classroom, like problem-solving, logic and movement. The training helps to demystify what coding is, and how easy it is to implement in the classroom,” says Hudson Park Primary technology integrator and ICT teacher Kelly Bush.
Bush, from East London, has developed lesson plans based on the TANKS and BOATS apps that formed part of the training.
Tangible Africa notes this work has earned her a provincial nomination for the National Teachers Awards, taking place later this month.
“The lesson plans link with concepts learners are familiar with in the South African environment. Items we use in the lessons are readily available, like egg boxes, chairs or shoes, so that even under-resourced schools can follow the lessons,” says Bush.
Another teacher, Mary Ann Chetty from Astra Primary School in Chatsworth, who participated in the SADTU Master Training, says she was already introducing coding concepts into her classroom and planning to offer extra-curricular games to children at her school in Kwa-Zulu Natal.
“I have a much better understanding of what we can do at our school with coding and robotics. The fact that the games are unplugged helps so much for a school like ours,” says Chetty.
Share