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Most Alberta teachers make good use of the Internet on a regular basis to get information on a curriculum unit, communicate with other teachers or to find out what educators near and far are thinking.
For educators in Africa, however, use of the Internet is in its infancy, but Dean McKinney and Donna Griffin hope to change that. The two Alberta teachers spent part of this past July in The Gambia, working with the Pan African Teachers’ Centre (PATC) to offer a workshop on Internet use to 21 teachers’ union representatives from seven African countries.
McKinney, who teaches computer technology and media at St. Albert Catholic High School, said the main purpose of the workshop was to help PATC members use the Internet for communicating with one another through e-mail and to instruct them in how to set up web pages for their unions. “We worked with the Gambia Teachers’ Union and Zack Bawa, PATC’s technology director, using a lab set up at the teachers’ union headquarters,” McKinney explained.
Though the equipment was outdated by Canadian standards, McKinney said the situation was much better than the one he encountered in 2003, when he gave a similar workshop in Lomé, Togo. “In The Gambia, the equipment was slow, like using an old-style 56k modem would be here, but the biggest challenge was the lack of Internet access. We had a tentative program planned, but had to modify it to suit the technological environment in the lab,” he noted.
McKinney said they rented an Internet café in town to register e-mail addresses with Yahoo for all the participants, and in this way they were able to have all the participants work on electronic messaging. “We never did get to fully demonstrate the webpage set up, but we showed everyone how they could go about it if they had the Internet access.”
Based on these experiences in Togo, McKinney and Griffin were more prepared for the difficulties they faced in The Gambia. “The biggest difference was that this time around we had the right people in the workshop. When we did the program in Lomé, participation was seen as a perk, rather than a learning experience, so a lot of the people who attended didn’t have enough background and weren’t even the people who would eventually be using the computers. This time, we specified that all the participants had to be people who were actually working with a computer and had at least a basic knowledge of Microsoft Word. And we asked them in advance to bring to the workshop all the information they wanted to put on their webpage, so we could show them how to create the page.”
McKinney said he also learned from his experience in Togo not to try doing too much. “When I went to Lomé, I didn’t have a good idea of the knowledge level of the participants or the technological problems we’d have.”
Though the workshop went well, McKinney said the participants were not as technologically fluent in computer use as the typical student in his classes here. “I use a student-centered approach in all my teaching, so that really helped. I introduce the key concepts to the group as a whole, and then work with each student individually, so I can accommodate their different skill levels and needs. I think I speak for everyone when I say the workshop was successful,” McKinney added. “We were able to adapt well when things happened and more than accomplished what we set out to do. And we both had a great time and met some new friends.”
He also arranged a virtual meeting with all the participants a few weeks after he returned to Alberta, so he could answer questions, discuss progress and renew friendships with the PATC members.
At the end of the one-week workshop, McKinney and Griffin flew to Dakar, Senegal, about an hour away, where they gave a presentation on the program at a conference sponsored by the International Education and Resources Network. McKinney also discussed the mentorship program the ATA had set up with PATC in 2004. This program is designed to give members of ATACC, the ATA’s Computer Council (now called the Educational Technology Council), an opportunity to work with their African colleagues.
“The mentorship program matches Alberta teachers and PATC members, primarily to help African teachers establish computer skills,” McKinney said. “But it also has proven beneficial for the teachers here, by giving them first-hand contact with African people and useful information for social science classes. The website for the mentorship program is on the ATACC server and can be accessed by teachers on both continents. The program was originally set up to last for five years, but I think we’ll be extending that to ten.”
Students at McKinney’s school in St. Albert are also helping with the program. “They helped plan the logistics for my trip and they also held a dance that raised about $2,500 toward our work in Africa. We had originally thought about using the money to build a school in Togo, but we may use it to ship good, used computers from Canada to Africa. There’s an organization that can handle the transport and set up for about $63 a machine.”
Since 1997, the ATA has provided financial support to PATC and ATACC has been working with the PATC to improve computer skills since 2002, when PATC Executive Director Lawrence Kannae visited Alberta to discuss a partnership.
Barbara Grinder is a freelance writer.
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