Teachers are on a technological front line – school children are becoming ever more adept at using the web for everything from socialising to doing their homework, and are beginning to resist what they consider “old fashioned” teaching methods. Teachers must find a way to engage them on their own terms, but often lack the web skills and experience to do so effectively. The solution is to get a comprehensive web education. GetSmarter’s UCT Internet Super-User course gives you just that.

I write this as an ex-teacher and headmaster of 40 years’ experience, whose family has been involved with education for many years. A recent comment in one of the newspapers that the dropping of OBE was not a cure-all has prompted me to write in support. While acknowledging the inequalities in education, one has at the same time to give credit to the role played by dedicated teachers. Apart from the hard work in the classroom, true teachers willingly participate in helping to organise sport and cultural activities. It seems to me that many teachers today are in it for all the wrong reasons.

Why does Singapore lead the world in student achievement? It’s all got to do with teacher quality. In Singapore, only the top third of secondary school graduates can apply for teacher training. And teaching is paid as well as science and engineering careers.

My gripe with teachers is that many of them always seem to view the teaching profession as something that’s gone to the dogs. I suppose I’m generalising here, because even in the work place (i.e. business) there are people who absolutely despise their jobs to the point of rather wanting to work on a kibbutz or log pine trees somewhere in remote Siberia while drinking vodka and singing the “Volga Boatmen’s Song”.

To improve education, SADTU must match its words with its deeds. Any discussion on education in South Africa inevitably begins with a litany of its failings. These collectively constitute an “education crisis”. Like most truths that are repeated often enough, this litany has turned into political cliché and lost the power to shock. That is why the new angle, in a speech by Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshekga this week, got people listening again.

With the average age of Civil Engineers in SA at approximately 57 years of age, we are going to experience major problems in SA over the next 10 – 30 years with our roads, dams, electricity, water reticulation, building and construction industries, unless we can somehow change the critical Maths and Science situation in SA.

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He
argued, “What’s a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?”.

Teachers go crazy for educational software. I’ve witnessed this first hand. As I sell educational software for EvaluNet, this obviously encourages me.
The crux of the matter however, is that there are too many schools out there who have too many educational software products that they just don’t use – either because they don’t have time, [...]

In my four years of working at EvaluNet, and visiting literally hundreds of schools across the country, I often come across schools that have spent tens of thousands of rands on educational software and hardware that was promised to be of immense value but turned out to be a massively useless white elephant.
The problem lies [...]