WORKING TOGETHER FOR THE FUTURE OF AFRICA

On Monday accompanied by the 9 other IBM'ers from India, Nigeria, Czech Republic, Japan, Canada and Great Britain went to the office of the Premier to kick off three very important projects aligned to South Africa's key imperatives

1.       Create a more responsive, accountable, effective and efficient Local Government system by assisting the Monitoring and Evaluation Department of the Office of the Premier in improving accuracy, validity and reliability data collected has

2.       Support A long and healthy life for all South Africans by working with NGO Kheth’Impilo to develop a new business model to improve capacity and health care services provided in public sector outreach by developing a new business model 

3.       Assist in delivery of quality basic education and more specifically improve science education through thru introduction of a program called Teachers Try Science

I was assigned to the third project to assist in improving the skills of South Africa’s Teachers in educating students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  The primary vehicle for this is a program called Teachers  Try Science, Teachers Try Science : enables teachers to revolutionize their teaching methods through design-based lessons which apply scientific, mathematical and technological solutions to engineering problems. The lesson plans are linked to online resources which guide teachers through effective delivery of project-based work; offer subject knowledge materials and professional development support. Teachers TryScience aims to improve teaching and learning by providing a comprehensive guide to classroom delivery and by fostering student interest and enthusiasm for the STEM subjects. Through the Teachers TryScience project-based model, students are provided with the opportunity to experience a range of STEM disciplines while exploring real world problems and challenges hands on.  Lessons encourage students to work collaboratively, employ critical thinking, inquiry and problem solving skills and achieve success by having autonomy to predicting, assessing and revising project outcomes. The site also provides social networking tools to enable educators to submit their own teaching materials and engage in focused discussions on relevant topics.

This  project builds on a CSC program in 2012 where IBM worked with the Eastern Cape Department of Education to map the KIdSmart programme for literacy, numeracy and life skills to the CAPS educational curriculum helping teachers improve the classroom experience for young learners while ensuring the course activities can be adopted as part of the school curriculum. This success of this has led to the roll out of the KidSmart in three more provinces in South Africa. Currently we have more than 2500 KidSmart units in schools being used by 5000 + teachers in South Africa.

In Africa these projects have special meaning as IBM has a strategic focus on Africa as a growth market. The level of development on the continent is fast and furious and we see the opportunity for many step changes and even “leap frogging” problems that exist today. As we work with NGO’s and Governments here in South Africa, we are working together for the future of Africa.