Maggie Verster

Hi Nancy and all!

I feel right at home with some old friends here ;-) I find that I can always find worthwhile professional development experiences by lurking close behind  those who are really passionate about learning and teaching (Hi Bron & Nellie)!

At the moment I am working on a PD project to design an online (and on-disk) ICT intervention for subject advisors of K12 schools nationally in South Africa (3000 of them). Most of them have beginner computer skills and have never interacted online before, so e-learning will be quite new to them! 

I am hoping that this group will inspire me to be more creative in my design while staying realistic within the boundaries and restrictions of existing learning realisties on the ground.

Maggie

Hi Dan and everybody,

I am an educational consultant/maths literacy teacher trainer/web 2.0 activist, trying deperately to convince teachers in my country (South Africa) to use computers and web 2.0 with their learners and collegues. I also run (hobbie) a free educational community website (www.easymaths.org.za) and as such is always nagging teachers for materials and resources to share. Sometimes teachers share resources that they got from someone else, who got it from someone else...(usually in scanned format) In our country we have no idea of copyright and teachers and learners copy and paste merrily...

Last year the dep of education paid for my community site to be redesigned and all the material in the old site is in the process (volunteer dependant) to be incorporated into the national educational portal (www.thutong.org.za) backend databases. So now I really am clueless of who own what. So this seminar is very important to me...got lots of questions..

I co-own my house (but sometimes I think the aliens, my children, actually own it) and I own a piece of paradise high up in the Amatola mountains where I escape to, to work. Car, laptop, smartphone and lots of other gadgets (love gadgets), books and more books. Lots of music CD's.

Hope to learn a lot.

Maggie

I am having so much fun with tagging. I find myself "trailing" the gurus in my field of interest and this has become a learning experience all in its own. For instance, I add the gurus or collegues that i know are as passionate about education/technology as me, to my network ,and they do the same for me. We then post good bookmarks to one another or I create a rss feed to their tags which keeps me up to date effortlessly.

I find that instead of Googling something, I first go and check what my gurus have tagged "for me" and it is ALWAYS more relevant than anything that Google can dish up for me! And it comes with their own personilised descriptions...

A primary school teacher at a workshop yesterday told me about in instance where her kiddies googled "hitler" and then stumbled on a porn hitler site. So I suggsted that she set a hitler tag with which means that she has already filtered the sites her kids can look at...

My name is Maggie Verster and I live in Johannesburg, South Africa.

I am currently doing my masters in computer based education and I am absolutely passionate about getting the teachers to use ICT in their classrooms. At the moment I am on a "blogging drive". I thought I will pick a tool at a time and get the teachers interested in web 2.0 tools...

As we are in the middle of end of year exams and marking, I promised to summarise what is happening here for my teachers to keep track of at my blog http://maggiev.edublogs.org, so I better get on with catching up....

Hi All,

I am quite excited about the use of mobile technology for teaching and learning in South Africa. All my rural teachers have cellphones (most of them are wap capable) and I am now busy setting them up with Mxit, which means that we can communicate quickly and very cheaply. They love it and I feel if though I am getting somewhere. For once they are not excluded when it comes to sharing (at the very least news and events)

We also have Dr Maths on Mxit which is a homework tutor system run by a wonderful lady Laurie and a few students. The kids seem to have really taken to this as well. See my blog: Cellphones in Education

Another innitiative is Mobi, a low subscription homework system for learners.The uptake seems to be quite significant as well. See Mobi - world first for mobile maths education