There is much confusion about the actual changes to the school curriculum in 2011 and beyond. I for one am happy to be referring to “learning areas” as “subjects” again! Here is the official statement from the Department of Basic Education concerning the changes taking place to the curriculum. Share it with your colleagues who may still be in the dark.

MySchool, South Africa’s biggest community support and fundraising programme, has recently committed to a partnership with EvaluNet. Soon the GetAhead range of educational software will be made available to MySchool supporters throughout South Africa at an exclusive discount, plus it will benefit the MySchool community programme.

“Sir, this is the most boring book I’ve ever read!”  I chirped my matric English teacher. “It’s got no relevance to us,” I continued as we plodded our way through another double period taking turns to read sections from “Shades”, our English set work book. The monotonous drone that was the tone in which most [...]

The replacement of the old Senior Certificate with the new National Senior Certificate (NSC) in 2008 was greeted with considerable suspicion. Once the results of the first cohort was released, various commentators speculated in the press about the standard of the examination and its associated curriculum. Are these fears warranted?

Most schools decide that the only thing that should be taught in a computer centre is computer related skills. Are there common guidelines for what needs to be taught/covered/acquired by the time a learner graduates to grade 8? Most schools follow their own ’syllabus’, some (at huge expense) pay for programs which very cleverly link the curriculum to computer literacy, and others still are not sure what skills they should be doing at all. What does the Education Department have to say about this?

Many classrooms leave much to be desired. Naked walls, where some have graffiti from the learners, filth messed on floors, chalkboards full of chalk powder and wooden cabinets heavy laden with dust. Old documents and scrap books sprawled on the teacher’s table, and everything that you can think of that injects you with the energy that simply says: “Keep as far out of this classroom as you possibly can”.

Leka ho nka leeto mehopolong ya hao, mme o tsepamise maikutlo a hao makgetlong kaofela ao o nnileng wa etela ngaka. Hopola botebo ba bohloko bo neng bo o qositse ho etela ngaka, ho farasa ha maikutlo a hao le takatso ya ho shwa nakwana e le hore bohloko bona bo thethefale kapa hona ho fela. Ana o ka dumela hore phetoho ya bohloko e bileng teng nako eo o kenang fela ka phaphosi ya ngaka, le pele ngaka e ka o tshwara, e ne e bakilwe ke boemo ba phaphosi eo ka sebele?

A key requirement for successful learning is that teaching should be interactive, i.e. that the learner is active during the process and not just the teacher. One of the most important ways of teaching interactively is to use effective questioning techniques. This is based on brain theories: The consensus among cognitive scientists (since B F Skinner) is that the mind seeks to find meaning, which is done through patterning. To achieve this, the mind must be active during the learning process. Here are some guides regarding successful questioning techniques …

If you’re a teacher stuck in the dark age, perhaps you should watch this video … if you know how.

Englishnet is a new website created by English teachers, for English teachers. It was created specifically to host resources for the teaching of the  South African English Language curriculum. This website offers a range of resources from lesson plans, to programmes of assessment, electronic marksheets, specific lessons on the prescribed literature, etc. It also has [...]

One of the demands of OBE is that teaching should be ‘learner-centred’ rather than ‘teacher-/educator-centred’. This is probably one of the main reasons for the failure of OBE. Let’s not reduce teachers to being a mere ‘facilitator’.

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, [...]