ICT Conference in Ongwediva *An announcement at the end*

This weekend, the school counsellor, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) teacher, and I attended a conference hosted by WorldTeach on ICT in schools.  We travelled for twelve hours to get there, most of that time also travelling with our circuit inspector (pretty much equivalent to a superintendent in the US), and other teachers and the principal from Rundu Secondary School.  We spent the night at Bennie's Entertainment Park and Conference Center, which was nice... complementary hot breakfast, yes please! Amanda, the semester volunteer in Rundu, and I, had dinner with Bret, who did a great job planning the conference and Mallory, another semester volunteer. 

 

We heard from volunteers about their achievements and struggles with ICT in the classroom, then discussed ways to overcome some of the challenges present. 

I thought it was pretty cool to show people the direction of technology in Namibian classrooms, and other teachers, principals and circuit officials were very impressed by the technology that we have at Vision School.  Other volunteers mentioned that Smartboards etc are coming to their schools.  I think this tangible knowledge that technology is coming helped motivate other schools to start preparing their teachers now with laptops, internet and training to embrace technology as soon as it arrives. 

It was also great to see the other volunteers for a bit! I met the summer volunteers, and roomed with Sherri, a teacher from Kansas who has so much experience with teacher training and teaching at so many levels. 

She helped me a lot, and provided me with hand-outs, ideas, links and names to help me next year, when I am the Teaching Fellow for WorldTeach Namibia.  This position will mean that I continue on for another year at RVS, and work with WorldTeach to train incoming volunteers and provide teaching-related support to them as they start their career as a volunteer teacher here. I will be in Namibia for another year!  

 In other news, back in Divundu, goats are able to sneak through the school fence and have eaten all our shrubs around campus. Now to find a way to keep them from the soccer pitch so they don’t get to that grass.