Saide Current Awareness
07 August 2023

 

Distance education 

• Lessons Learned about Distance Education for Teacher Training Source: ICT Works How has distance education for teacher professional development changed in the past decade, especially as a result of COVID-19? Addressing this question was one of the main impetuses for Education Development Center’s recent publication of its second edition of Distance Education for Teacher Training: Modes, Models and Methods, originally published in 2011.
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• Optimizing Distance Education: What I Learned from 20 Online Courses Over 3 Years Source Medium via The StartUp Strategies for building an informed, interconnected, and inspired learning experience.

 

 Education: South Africa 

• Why do youngsters struggle with maths? Source: IOL Poor maths results in South African schools have long been a source of concern and has largely been blamed on untrained teachers. That is often the case, but there’s another possibility that needs research and understanding: dyscalculia, the numerical version of dyslexia.
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• Schooling, health among services affected by Cape taxi strike Source: TimesLive As desperate commuters climb through bus windows to hitch a ride or are forced to walk for kilometres, the minibus taxi strike is also affecting healthcare, schooling and other services in parts of the Western Cape.
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• Students march to Union Buildings to demand that NSFAS scrap new ‘extra-fees’ payment system Source: Daily Maverick University students marched to the Union Buildings on Wednesday, demanding that NSFAS ditch a new payment system that beneficiaries say includes exorbitant fees.
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• Free State police nab 14 protesting UFS students amid ongoing NSFAS protest Source: TimesLive Fourteen UFS students have been arrested following protests at the university's campuses. 
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• Anglo donates CBD building to pioneering institute set on bolstering education, inner city Source: Miningweekly Diversified miner Anglo American on August 4 announced the handover of its 45 Main Street building, in the Johannesburg central business district (CBD), to nonprofit private education institution the Maharishi Invincibility Institute.

 

Open Education and Open Educational Resources

• The UNESCO OER Recommendation and Open Knowledge An Overview for African Librarians Source: AfLIA  This resource, developed by African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA)3  in collaboration with Neil Butcher and Associates , explains the pertinence of open licensing, the #OER Recommendation, and provides practical applications of the Recommendation within the context of African libraries.
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• Harnessing the Power of Open Educational Resources: Your Guide to Cost-Effective and Flexible Learning Materials Source: The ParentSquare Harnessing the power of Open Educational Resources (OER) involves leveraging freely available educational materials to enhance teaching and learning experiences. By utilizing OER, educators can provide cost-effective and flexible learning materials that benefit both educators and learners. Here’s a guide to making the most of OER:
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• LibreTexts Single Sign On (SSO), LibreOne, Arrives in Late August Source: Libretext If you’ve been using any combination of the LibreVerse apps & services (Conductor, ADAPT, etc.), you may have struggled to manage the combination of different credentials required to login to those services. LibreOne will eliminate the need for multiple credentials and will allow you to manage “One account for everything LibreTexts”. It is a Central Authentication Service that aims to provide faster logins, increased security and efficiency, and a better user experience overall. 

 

Language and Literacies  

• Raising informed media consumers starts at school Source: AfricaCheck Simply teaching media literacy is not enough in today’s online environment. Africa Check has created fact-checking resources for teachers that directly target harmful information.
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• Boost Students’ Skills and Passion for Reading Source: MiddleWeb Teaching reading is centered around the tension of time and its limits: How do we teach students to master standards while also cultivating a love of reading? A review. of the book by experienced ELA educator Laura Robb which tackles this issue head-on in her newest professional book, Increase Reading Volume: Practical Strategies That Boost Students’ Achievement and Passion for Reading. 

 

Post Schooling

• Africa is home to oldest and youngest universities – Map Source:University World NewsThe African continent is home to four of the world’s oldest universities and also to some of the planet’s youngest, first-ever universities in a given country, with some countries having established their first institutions less than 10 years ago.
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• Ubuntu can advance the global citizenship education paradigm Source:University World News Universities in Africa seemed to have succumbed to neoliberalism by focusing on managerialist practices that enhance performativity, or work for profit, at these institutions. Considering that performativity became associated with universities’ performance on the African continent, it is not surprising that they nowadays focus on increased outputs that can ensure monetary gains.
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• Slow start for government’s ambitious student housing project Source:University World News Ambitious moves towards creating a vibrant student housing infrastructure with 300,000 beds at South Africa’s 26 public universities and 50 Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges by 2030 have had an inauspicious start.
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• Supervisor enhancement programme strengthens research Source:University World News Postgraduate supervision is crucial for enhancing research output. The supervisor is, therefore, a key component of the graduate student’s success, yet academics, in particular early-career researchers, do not necessarily receive training to be effective study leaders.
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• Nzimande will announce his next move on the future of Unisa Source: IOL The Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology Dr Blade Nzimande has remained tight-lipped on his next move on the future of Unisa.

 

Skills and Employment 

• South Africa must build renewables skills pool to catch up with renewable power demands - Nordex Source: Engineering News Creamer Media South Africa currently has a shortfall of trained and experienced wind energy technicians, after having lost much of its skilled capacity to advanced international markets and, like its international counterparts, it needs a growing pool of qualified candidates to draw from as demand for new power generation grows.
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• YES, UJ partner to tackle the country’s youth unemployment crisis Source: Engineering News Creamer Media Private sector jobs engine the Youth Employment Service (YES) and the University of Johannesburg (UJ) have committed to collaborate on a range of initiatives to provide skills, training and entrepreneurship programmes for South Africa’s youth
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• Basic Education Employment Initiative is scoring points on youth employment – don’t pull the funding plug Source: Daily Maverick The Basic Education Employment Initiative is a viable and promising programme where every rand spent by the state does double the work. Yet there might not be funding in the long run.

 

Teaching and Learning- Local and Global

• Essential Considerations for Addressing the Possibility of AI-Driven Cheating, Part 1 Source Faculty Focus Dr. Torrey Trust provides  six essential considerations for addressing AI-driven cheating. and in  Part 2 discusses how you can redesign assignments using the TRUST model as a pedagogical tool. 
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• ALL THINGS #UNGRADING Source: #Ungrading A collection of resources by David Buck on alternative grading practises
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• Educator knowledge hub Source: AfricaCheck A knowledge hub for educators that will help you introduce fact-checking concepts to your students and teach them the media literacy skills they need to identify and stop the spread of disinformation and misinformation.
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• Confident and Wrong: Can Students Learn from Their Mistakes? Source:The Learning Scientist Cindy Nebel writes " We’re all wrong from time to time. We misremember something or we were taught something factually inaccurate to begin with. It happens. As an educator, I have certainly had students that come to my class with some inaccurate beliefs (see neuromyths). When students find out that they’re wrong about something, how often does that sink in? How often do we learn from our mistakes?"

 

Technology Enhanced Learning

• Decolonizing Digital Learning: Equity Through Intentional Course Design Source: Distance Education What’s the purpose of lived experience in assessments? How do we even grade lived experience? These were some of the questions asked by faculty during a departmental presentation focusing on assessment and course design in the ChatGPT era. It got us thinking about the digital divide and how much of the literature focuses on unequal access to digital technology and skills. Whereas the divide seems to go beyond access to impact what counts as knowledge and how it is represented and reshaped by power in distance learning modes. Abstract deadline
  02 October 2023
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• The Chat GPT Storm and What Faculty Can Do Source: Nurse Educator ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence-driven, pretrained, deep learning language model, can generate natural language text in response to a given query. Its rapid growth has led to concerns about ethical use in academia. Faculty should understand the potential benefits and limitations of ChatGPT and create assignments that emphasize self-reflection, critical thinking, problem solving, and independent learning. Dr. Sun explains ChatGPA and provides guidelines on its use by faculty. Watch the video and read the article.
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• Editorial: ChatGPT: Challenges, Opportunities, and Implications for Teacher Education Source: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN TECHNOLOGY AND TEACHER EDUCATION "In this editorial, we first discuss challenges and opportunities associated with the use of AI in K-16 Education broadly. We argue that the best way to address challenges and inappropriate uses of AI is by focusing on inclusion rather than exclusion. Thus, we discuss potential uses, risks, misuses, and opportunities associated with ChatGPT. We conclude with implications for teacher education, providing a series of recommended AI integration practices for teacher educators."
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• AI in the Classroom - Generative AI Live Lesson Source:LinkedIn CHris Goodall. Head of Digital Education at AI in Education shares some examples of prompts i.e. AI Live Lesson Prompts, AI Live - Differentiation & Scaffolding and AI Live - Inquiry Based Learning  & 21st Century Learning Design
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• Quick Guide Graphic for Students: Should I Use AI? Source: AI in Education A downloadable guide with other resources to build students literacy.
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• Should smartphones be banned in schools? Source:TRT UNESCO calls for the ban of smartphones in schools, citing their negative impact on learning and facilitation of bullying. However, implementing such policies can be challenging due to differing opinions on whether the ban is necessary or not. Guests: Kate Redman Senior Project Officer at UNESCO's Global Education Report Rachel Harper Head Teacher at St. Patrick's Primary School Adam Tyner National Research Director at Thomas B. Fordham Institute
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• Technology in education in Kenya: from gathering dust to gathering momentum Source: Unesco A blog post by Monica Kinyua, a proud Kenyan teacher and “Girls United” Club Leader at Nyakio Primary School in the rural South Kinangop Sub-County of Nyandarua County, Kenya, who received teacher training in a Technology Hub organized by Flying Kites, a charitable organisation.

 

 

• Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions: Call for Chapters August 25 2023
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• Call for Contributions! NORRAG Special Issue 10: Education for Societal Transformation: Alternatives for a Just Future 15 September 2023. 
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• Unpacking the "Black Box" of AI-assisted Feedback: Students’ feedback perceptions, emotions, actions, and literacies Abstract Deadline 31  August 2023 
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• Climate Action Pedagogy (CAP) Design Challenge: Live Co-Working Session 16 August 2023
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• Fully Online Distance Education Symposium 19-20 October 2023
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• Four special issues Call for Papers on Generative AI in Education 
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• Open call for Distance Education themed issue proposals (2024)