I’ve spoken a lot about the importance of technology in education, and how it can help to facilitate sufficient learning and bring effective teaching to learners in the more remote areas.

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Digital Literacy: the 21st century Perspective

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Preparing the Next African Generation through Digital Literacy Integration

 Technology-driven education can be harnessed in a variety of ways to improve the quality and reach of education across Africa.

All this is very promising. However, if we are able to use technology appropriately and effectively in the process of educating our children, we first need to make sure that our teachers are thoroughly familiar and comfortable with the technologies and teaching methods themselves.

In order for teachers to deploy technology, they need training in it. What we often lose sight of when we think about all the potential that technology holds for education, is that there is still a significant human element involved. No matter what technology is used, someone still needs to do the actual teaching, as well as provide learners with the necessary support when using the technology. At least until we invent teacher robots

So while we are already seeing the deployment of technology in some African classrooms, this has to be combined with comprehensive teacher training, not only in the use of the technology, but in how to teach learners to use it.

Education experts believe that there is a vast amount of teacher training that has to occur before we will be able to reap the full benefits of technology in the classroom.

In many cases before we can get to the point of actually beginning teacher training in technology, we need to overcome existing hesitance and attitudes, and sometimes even fear of technology.

There is often a techno-phobic reaction among people who are not familiar with it. This is usually caused by a lack of previous exposure.

In Africa, we need to face the challenge of teachers themselves being completely unfamiliar with technology and having a resistance to implementing it in the classroom. This resistance isn’t due to them being anti-technology; it’s simply that they are unsure of it and don’t feel comfortable using it. It’s this orientation that first needs to be changed, so that teachers can fully embrace the technology that they will be using.

Another challenge is school owners buying into it. We know there are lots of training programs going on across African schools for teachers. However, most of these training still revolve around the conventional classroom practice; technology is always out of the equation.

If schools adopt technology-driven education as part of teachers' engagement policy, there is no way teachers could resist it. The issue here is that we don't seem to have realized the need for technology in our learning process; or maybe, we've learnt but are hypocritical about it, possibly because we don't care about the future of our children.

The most fundamental thing to establish when training teachers in the use of technology is relevance. Much of the resistance to technology adoption comes from a lack of appreciation of its relevance to the day-to-day business of teaching. We need to assist teachers to grasp this relevance – to their subjects and to their teaching methods.

We need to clearly show teachers how technology can improve their teaching and create better learner performance. This can only be done using face-to-face training, where a human experience is combined with technology.

Once teachers fully appreciate the relevance of technology to their work, and the many ways in which it can help them, they will be in a much better position to employ technology in their classrooms.

We are driving the campaign on the training of African teachers on digital literacy. Join us.

The benefits of the digital revolution to the overall good of the African society are quite enormous, whether it's in the area of health, education, commerce, governance etc.

Across the world today, the opening up of the digital space is granting access to the citizens of the world to benefit from intercultural interactions in finding solutions to health, education and business questions. The age-long cultural boundaries are now giving way to a shared value among the citizens of the world.

Also Read: Digital Literacy: the 21st Century Perspective

School children can access academic materials today as well as learn from the world's best, by a click of a button.

Businesses, no matter where they're operating from, can have the entire globe as their market place. 

Today, there are many online doctors offering health care solutions to everyone; it doesn't matter where you're coming from.

Through social engagement, citizens of virtually every country of the world, are now finding a voice to be part of the sociopolitical discourse of their various countries.

Communication and transfer of ideas today is a function of clicking a button.

Expectedly, there is no sign that the current wave of digital revolution is going to take any cool in the nearest future. What we rather observe is the unprecedented and upward swing of this digital revolution.

Simply put: in the next couple of years, all it would take to find solutions to a myriads of life's nagging problems, would be by embracing and dining with this digital revolution.

The begging question: where is Africa in this equation?

The most brutal truth here is that Africa as a continent, especially the Sub-Sahara Africa, would suffer further damage if she fails to embrace digital literacy, which is a key ingredient in benefiting from the digital revolution.

The charge must start from African leaders through our educational administrators. 

We must conquer fear; we must conquer Indolence; we must conquer greed.

We must conquer our nonchalant attitudes that is potentially putting our children into a big risk.

Have you imagined what the future of Africa would be if we continue to shy away from embracing the digital revolution? 

Have you wondered of what the future holds for the African child, with what we're still offering in schools today.

Today's children are of digital natives. Everything about them revolves around digital. Hence, except they are grounded in digital literacy, we are not preparing them for the future. And that would be so heartless of us.

African schools must integrate digital literacy in their teaching and learning processes, otherwise, we are fighting a lost battle.

We are collaborating with schools across Africa to realize this noble target.

Our campaign: #EduTEaCHAfrica is here to seek partnership of government, corporates, schools and individuals to promote our Digital Literacy brands:

***TeacherTeachTech- for teachers

***Tech4Teens- for students

If you're a school owner or manager, contact us to train your teachers (small commitment fee) and your students (free).

Please join the Digital Revolution for Africa and save the next African generation from woe.

Our Contacts:

Email chimaeducator@gmail.com

WhatsApp +2349086176094

Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

The Definition Of The Flipped Classroom

As a 21st century teacher,  you’ve undoubtedly heard of the flipped classroom. Flipped classroom remains one of the most popular trends in education in recent memory,

A flipped classroom is one where students are introduced to content at home, and practice working through it at school.

Benefits of the Flipped Classroom

The Flipped Classroom model drastically changes the way you teach. If you are a teacher that likes to keep up with current advancements in education, and reap their vast rewards, the model is a great thing to try. At the very least your students will have more access to the material. They will also have more access to you, which is the biggest benefit of the Flipped Classroom.

This doubles student access to teachers–once with the videos at home, and again in the classroom, increasing the opportunity for personalization and more precise guiding of learning. In the flipped classroom model, students practice under the guidance of the teacher, while accessing content on their own.

A side benefit is that teachers can record lectures that emphasize critical ideas, power standards, and even the pace of a given curriculum map. It also has the side benefit of allowing students to pause, rewind, rewatch, etc., as well as creating a ready-made library for student review, make-up work, etc.

Key Components of a Result-Oriented Flipped Classroom
Wants to know more about video creation?

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Understanding Digital Literacy

Digital literacy refers to the totality of an individual's ability to find, evaluate, produce and communicate clear information through writing and other forms of communication on various digital platforms.

The *keywords* here are:

✔Find: The ability to search out the needed information the easiest and most convenient way using digital tools.

✔ Evaluate: The ability to evaluate web contents for security and safety purposes

✔ Produce: The ability to personally create digital contents for personal and global support.

✔ Communicate: The ability to send the right and appropriate information across the web using digital tools.

The 21st century schools and teachers have no other option than to integrate digital literacy as part of their curriculum design. Failing to do this is a clear way of making oneself irrelevant in this century with its technology-driven processes. Besides, it will amount to providing a bleak future for our Digital native learners.

Components of Digital Literacy in the 21st century

The meaning of digital literacy has shifted over the years.

Years back, job candidates with "Proficient at Microsoft Word" tag on their resume, were considered digital literates...

But this is 21st century and things have changed dramatically- Microsoft Word proficiency is now of a lower standard digital set skill.

The question is: *what does digital literary connote for 21st century professionals?*

To be a Digital Literate, the following components must be understood, mastered and properly used:

Digital Information Search

Digital Community & Networking

Digital Communication

Digital Production

Digital Citizenship

     
DIGITAL INFORMATION SEARCH

Digital Literacy involves knowing how to properly search for information digitally considering cost, convenience, safety and time consumption.

The _safety_ here is that of you ad well as others.

DIGITAL COMMUNITY & NETWORKING

Digital Literacy involves knowing how the Digital community such as Social media works.

Here, we are talking of social media usage for communication and branding purposes, be it individual or corporate; for academic, business or professional benefit.

Another thing to know here is about Social media schedules as well as Rules of engagement.

Think of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest etc.

DIGITAL COMMUNICATION

Digital Literacy involves the mastering and use of digital tools to communicate approximately.

One can only do this when one is proficient in the use of basic digital tools such as Google Tools(Google mail, Google Drive, YouTube, Google forms, Virtual classroom etc); Microsoft Packages(Word processing, Spreadsheet, Presentation tool, Database, Virtual classroom etc) and very many others.

DIGITAL PRODUCTION

Digital Literacy involves the ability to produce digital contents for both individual and global support.

A lot of people are always happy searching for and getting every kind of information online, without even bothering on how those contents are created or who created them.

Think of digital productions such as web pages, blog articles, apps development, videos, online learning platforms etc.

How many of these can you do?

DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP

Digital Literacy enrolls one to a global community of Digital Citizens.

With such multilingual and multicultural system comes the need for an acceptable code of conduct.

Hence, every Digital citizen must understand acceptable and non-acceptable behavior in this global community.

You may have you heard of terms like *plagiarism*; *spamming*; *identity theft*; *cyber bullying* etc.

The knowledge of all these is what makes one a truly Digital Citizen, which is a key component of *Digital Literacy*

Make yourself relevant by becoming a Digital Literate.

We are training...

There are many educational technology tools available to use in your in today's  classroom – offering an interactive and fun class as well as helping to develop critical thinking in learners.

Whether you're a seasoned tech classroom user or new to the idea, below are a few handy tools for you to get your teeth into. It's not an extensive list but these five are easy to use and a good introduction to what's available. If you have any other suggestions, please do share them in the comments section below.

Google Drive is a free online storage cloud that has Google's version of Word, Powerpoint and Excel built into it. It allows students to create documents for free on the go. They can access and edit these documents on a tablet device or computer from various locations with their Google account login. They can share the documents they are working on with other students and can even work in one document at the same time to co-create pieces of work. They can also share the document with their teachers while they work or once they've finished to get instant feedback.

Contact chimaeducator@gmail.com to order a Video Pack on Google tools

Edmodo is a free social learning platform for students, teachers and parents. It looks a little bit like Facebook so it is a familiar format for students to use. But before you run for the hills, it is very different to Facebook in that it's completely controlled by the teacher and specifically designed for educational purposes.

It has a shared timeline as a homepage where you and your students can interact and you can allow students to interact with one another, if you wish. Both teachers and students have a library where they can store documents and share them with others if they want to. The teacher can set assignments, students hand in assignments and teachers feedback on the work all within Edmodo. Two particularly useful functions are the quizzes and polls, and there's also a built-in grade book that houses your teacher-assessed grades and quiz results for each student.

It really is a very useful all-round tool. You could consider saving essential documents – such as mark schemes, poems being studied and teaching presentations – in the class library to give students easy access to these at any time. You could also post photos of classwork completed by groups of students or individuals so all the students can see it for best practice. You could schedule weekly spelling tests – set as multiple choice quizzes – through Edmondo which will automatically collate the results so you can easily see trends within the class's performance.

There a loads of tools out there that capture your computer or device screen and allow you to record your voice while you do so. I will recommend Screencastomatic  which is quite cheap ($18 for annual subscription, unlimited recording time). The idea is that you can take a picture of your computer or device screen and then set your voice against the website or pre-prepared powerpoint. If you collate these in one place, you have a bank of instructional videos.

A simple way to use this tool is to create short instructional videos to help your students study independently or revise a topic. For instance, you might create clips outlining different writing styles or perhaps your team can work together to create clips on themes you all think are important. You could get students involved and ask them to prepare a short videos explaining poems that you have been studying as a revision tool.

One way to collate the videos created by a screencast tool is to start a YouTube channel and upload them all there. This is simply your own YouTube home page – you can style the background, upload profile information and follow other channels of interest. You can also create playlists within your channel to organise videos into topics and allow students to find them easily. If creating your own videos is not for you then you can create playlists of videos that are already out there that relate to the topics you are studying.

What about creating a channel for your department? Create a playlist for each topic on your curriculum map from myths and legends to war poetry and creative writing. All you would need to do is to drop in videos of your choice. The videos could be created by your students, staff or just found from educational sources around the web. The clips could help students get more from the topic or encourage them to read and research around the subject – a wonderful resource for years to come that you can regularly update.

Also Read: 'Free' Blog for African Schools & Teachers

Get your students to create their own blogs and use them as digital portfolios for the year, posting up their best work. Getting feedback from a real audience as well as peers, parents and teachers is a great opportunity for development. How about creating a blog for your class? You could update the main page with homework tasks, recommended reading and updates from your classroom.

Try creating a post with a task or question based on the topic you're studying and get the students to use the comments facility to respond. They could even extend their answers by responding to one another's comments. You could use the blog as a record of lessons by uploading presentations and photos. If a student is ever absent, this is an invaluable tool to enable them to keep up.

I hope you find some of these tools a beneficial to use as I have over the last year and a half.