Transcript THE IMPLICATIONS OF PREVAILING DIGITAL LITERACY GAPS …

THE IMPLICATIONS OF PREVAILING DIGITAL LITERACY GAPS IN
HISTORICALLY DISADVANTAGED SCHOOLS
Presented at the School Libraries International Conference
By Thembeka Thembi Majombozi
Director
Africa One Education and Enterprise
083 940 2587
[email protected]
IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THANK A
TEACHER!
Take a moment and think of a child from a rural
school who walks barefooted almost three hours per
trip to and from school everyday. With little or nothing
to eat. Think about what it takes to create South
Africa’s own Mark Zuckerberg out of this child.
WHAT OPPORTUNITIES ?
Are there any opportunities for this child?
Who has better opportunities of being an innovative young person, this one
or the one who went to a well resourced private school with an abundance
of resources and good motivation.
HOW USEFUL ARE OUR LIBRARIES ?
I believe schools are there to develop the best minds.
For a young person to be inventive and innovative, the first step is a core and
solid foundation of literary.
School libraries exist to support educational goals, to inculcate, develop
and sustain a culture of reading.
School libraries are the nucleus of creativity where children learn to enjoy
using information, where they are exposed to a diversity of ideas and to
information and communication technologies.
Are our learners benefiting from libraries?
What happened to real librarians ?
What is the absorption rate of librarians at this stage ?
How many professional librarians are sitting there unemployed when
there is a need for one somewhere?
THE STATE OF OUR LIBRARIES
- In February 2008 the Cape Argus took a snap survey and reported that
nine out of ten township high schools’ libraries are permanently locked.
- They have no books, they are non existent.
- On the 16th March this year newspapers reported that a farm school in
Natal called Asithuthuke Combined School had no library.
- The same month the Mercury reported that since 2004 the Msunduzi
Municipality has had no budget for libraries.
- This particular library was serving about 60 000 people most of them
children before its present moribund state.
The councilor complained that the library has leaking roofs and ruined
carpets.
In Gauteng most school libraries are closed during the day because the
teachers who are expected to be full time librarians are in fact full time
educators first with very busy schedules and a huge amount of
overwhelming paperwork.
WHAT DOES SOUTH AFRICA INVEST IN ICT DEVELOPMENT?
Compared to other developing countries South Africa invests 10.5% on
Information and Communication Technology and Research and
Development. Other developing countries spend 30%. I believe this is the
starting point of all our problems.
OTHER INITIATIVES ANS PARTNERSHIPS
There have been many initiative and partnerships to improve libraries. What
has aroused my curiosity about these men and women, obviously with good
intentions, is that the success of their partnership is measured on the basis
of the success of their business relationship and the quantity of books
children take home and not on quality information absorbed from these
books.
WHAT DO WE DO TO PROMOTE READING?
After children have read these books do we do consistent learner follow ups
to find out if they were able to follow the storyline?
Do learners notice the hard work that went into writing?
Do they ask questions like “how can someone write about people he has
never met, places he has never seen?”
Writing is a dialogue between the writer and the text. After reading, are
learners able to tell us what attracted them in the title of the book, how did
the title stir interest?
What does a learner think was the purpose of writing the story?
Do they discuss the sequence of events and perhaps suggest how the
author could have done a better job?
Do young readers have learning logs?
This should be the beginning of intellectual discussions amongst our
learners from a very early age.
Why I am concerned about this is that we need this kind of stimulation from
a very early age to be able to produce innovators.
We are unable to engage children in such discussions because there of lack
of professional and skilled personnel and no time.
Not that there is no budget considering what goes back to Treasury.
DO WE SHARE A COMMON NATIONAL VISION ?
Our country’s ICT vision for 2015 is to create an inclusive knowledge society
where ICT based innovation flourishes.
The young Youth and ICT Award winner from India sums this up when she
says “participation and active citizenship is about having the right, the
space, the opportunity and the support to be able to make it”
Suman Arya from Agra in India won an award of being a young inventive
female.
She lives in a rural village, she walks hours to school, has to fetch water
from a river. Remember that innovators are special but everyone has the
innate capacity to innovate.
WE CANT COMPLAIN ABOUT POVERTY ANYMORE!
1. The mindset and an enabling environment for that particular course
regardless of other factors.
2. The optimal use of minimal resources for maximum benefit.
3. Consistent monitoring and evaluation.
4. A common national vision and goals.
If, given the same problems as ours, they could make it, why can’t we make
it ?
WHAT TO DO
1. We have to stop giving learners sleeping pills at school. A sleeping pill is
a repressive risk averse environment.
2. Refrain from teaching accepted and conventional lessons, facts and
methods.
3. Expose children to researchers who will enhance innovation.
4. Let learners get used to using unconventional problem
solving methods.
5. Ask learners to narrate how they approach problems and choose to solve
them.
6. Encourage the use of illustrations.
7. Consider value and rank order. That is the absolute value of the impact of
an innovation.
8. To sum it up, innovations break existing rules.
9. Encourage group work, whether it is in the form of an experiment or a
discussion.
10. Let learner work in groups of three four for brainstorming and as
TIPS
Much as the syllabus does not make learners
creative thinkers, we need to assist them to develop
that skill. How?
1. By creating an enabling environment conducive to innovation in its essence.
2. Schools are perpetually offline, limiting thousands and millions of young minds from reaching their full
potential. Get them online.
3. Learning to use a computer is fine. Children need research skills. They need to be allowed around a
computer with the full knowledge that if it breaks they can fix it. When will they be exposed to that and
many other computer related programmes. When they learn these things on their own we suspect they
want to do harm.
4. Stress the importance of diversity. In an environment where there is no diversity there is lack of
innovation.
5. I quote Minister Mosibudi Mangena from a speech he made at the Intel Leadership Forum on the 5th
December 2008. He said “The ability to understand and make use of ICT digital literacy is essential to
employment success, civic participation, accessing entertainment and education. It revolutionizes how
we work, live, play and learn.”
HOW DO WE CONTRIBUTE TO THIS PROBLEM?
The problem with us is we talk more and act less. Can you imagine a meeting where people give feedback
and strategize in twenty minutes?
HERE ARE A FEW RESULTS OF WASTEFUL TALK-SHOPS.
People look forward to another long meeting.
They do not do fieldwork.
THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN POSITIVE CHILD DEVELOPMENT
“When are we going to learn that school has done away with winners and losers, but life has not. That life
does not give as many times as we want to get the right answers”.
Before I proceed let me explain that media reaches places you and I cannot reach.
Children in remote and rural areas rely on radio,television and newspapers.
Content-wise does media report ICT’s in such a way as to stir a reader’s interest on the subject?
Does media understand the 2015 ICT vision for South Africa?
Media is a significant in forming and delimiting public assumption, attitudes and moods of ideology.
One very significant way of channeling this is via educational inserts they have as well as news.
The inserts always have a partnership and sometimes a commercial aspect.
News is something else.
News sources tend to become “actors” who frame the news agenda.
When that happens regularly, they tell the audience what to think.
One such example is the way in which media has successfully played on public sympathy to portray
disability.
Disability and chronic illnesses have been showed as tragedies with illusions of pity and charity images.
Leaving fundamental issues out.
Look how successfully media has coined terms such as “wheelchair bound” retarded, mentally defective’.
The result is a society which pities anyone who is disable even though that person does not deserve pity.
Society believes people with disabilities are in perpetual pain.
TELEVISION IS NOT REAL LIFE, IN REAL LIFE PEOPLE HAVE TO LEAVE
COMFORT ZONES AND GO TO WORK
THE IMPACT OF MEDIA ON CHILD DEVELOPMENT
Our learners are regular readers and viewers of tabloids and soapies.
There is a saying that garbage in, garbage out GIGO.
In one of the writing skills workshops I asked learners to prepare questions they would ask
authors.
It seems like learners have a perception that authors are celebrities, so they lined up
celebrity related questions, only a few on content.
This is what tabloids and soapies do very well.
They destroy one’s intellectual capacity.
I got very tough with them and told them if they think I am tough they must wait till they get
a boss.
When it comes to issues of child development society has to compel media to have a buy
in with a strong social conscience. We need to close the existing gap between schools and
media and ensure that media does not just report but pushes a conscious national agenda
of developing young minds as part of a collective effort to nurture the existing knowledge
base and add value to intellectual prowess.
Therefore it is of utmost importance that families, civil society, government, institutions,
media, to mention a few, all come together with a common objective to create innovative
inventive young people.
There has to be a willingness to receive and build on this kind of support.
My humblest advice to learners is the one Bill Gates gave to some high school pupils
saying “if you mess up, its not your parents fault. Before you were born, they were not as
boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills.”
Lastly, let us stop fooling ourselves about South African bright minds who wins
international awards elsewhere, who were groomed and developed elsewhere and say they
are ours.
Let us always bear in mind that we should earn it.
CONTACT US
THEMBI MAJOMBOZI.
MANAGING DIRECTOR.
AFRICA ONE EDUCATION AND ENTERPRISE.
CELL: 083 940 2587.
LANDLINE: 011 487 3515.
[email protected].