Greetings from La Plantation Hotel, Sir Seewoosagur city here on the beautiful island on Mauritius in the India Ocean. I am here attending the ICT in Education Workshop (31st Aug – 3rd Sep) 2009. This event is co-hosted by the World Bank Institute, Microsoft Corporation, Cisco Systems, Education Impact and the University of Witwatersrand.

Participants were drawn from the Ministries of Education of Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.  Additionally, there participants from SchoolNet South Africa, SchoolNet Uganda and The Global e-Schools.

The theme of the workshop is: ” EFFECTIVE USE OF ICT IN EDUCATION: IMPROVING IMPACT THROUGH PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT”  – A WORKSHOP FOR POLICY IMPLEMENTORS

Workshop objectives:

•  Share international and continental experience on the progress of ICT in Education initiatives with African education policy implementers.
• Allow participants to reflect on their own country-level experiences and share projects which have been developed and completed or are in progress, with a particular focus on professional development of school managers and teachers. 
•  Formulate an action plan for taking professional development in ICT in education to the next level in each country, taking into account the realities and constraints that most participating countries face with regard to the larger scale expansion. 
•  Create a community of policymakers and implementers who face similar challenges in the developing context. 
•  Test the framework of the new course for mid-level policy implementers and receive feedback from participants.

The African Innovative Teachers Competition

Three Uganda Innovative teachers namely Richard Bukenya (a music teacher from Gayaza High School), Milton Chebet (a Biology teacher from Gayaza High School) and Solomon Bbumba, a primary teacher arrived yesterday Mon 31st August at this beautiful city of Sir Seewoosagur city, Mauritius aboard Emirates via Dubai to join other innovative teachers from other African countries at the Le Meridien Hotel, Mauritius. On the same flight was Ronald Ddungu of Gayaza High School, one of the Africa continental judges for this year’s Innovative Teachers’ competitions. All the innovative teachers are very active members of the SchoolNet Uganda Network.

On 2nd Sept, Wed afternoon, participants of the ICT in Education Workshop will join the Innovative Teachers for a joint session. This will be followed by the Innovative Teachers’ Projects Exhibition, selection of the winners and the Awards ceremony. The winners at the completion will represent Africa at the global Innovative Teachers’ competition to be held in Brazil, later this year.

We need to pray to God to bless our Ugandan team to make it Brazil for the Global competition. It should be remembered that Ronald Ddungu was second in one of the categories in last year’s global competitions which were held in Hong Kong. 

I am very optimist about our team and will keep you posted.

 Kakinda Daniel
Training Director, SchoolNet Uganda.