The Internet is currently full of posts about using Microsoft products effectively in the classroom. Here are a number of them from this past week. The list is embedded below but can also be found at http://bit.ly/2lXzEkA . The link to the back-dated posts is http://bit.ly/1GVLTUZ
Monday, 13 February 2017
Useful Microsoft in Education posts this week #90
The Internet is currently full of posts about using Microsoft products effectively in the classroom. Here are a number of them from this past week. The list is embedded below but can also be found at http://bit.ly/2lH4yus The link to the back-dated posts is http://bit.ly/1GVLTUZ
Friday, 10 February 2017
Useful Google in Education posts this week #93
After looking through all the Google posts that were shared to various subscriptions recently, these are a selection that look useful for teachers http://bit.ly/2lE1YFz (The link to previous posts can be found here https://goo.gl/CNO3M2)
Thursday, 9 February 2017
Do you know about Microsoft’s Digital civility pledge to help create a safer, more civil Internet?
How aware are you of Internet safety? Do you know about Microsoft’s Digital Civility pledge which formed part of the recent Safer Internet Day. On the recent Safer Internet Day: https://www.saferinternetday.org/, 7th February, organizations and people around the world committed to promoting safer and more responsible online use of technology especially concerning young people and children. Here is a map from the website showing all the activities around the world to celebrate Safer Internet Day
Will you take the Digital Challenge?
Microsoft took the opportunity to introduce the term ‘digital civility’ – a plea to people around the world to treat each other with respect online. Microsoft has a long-standing commitment to online safety and urged Internet users to take the Digital Civility Challenge. The goal of the Challenge is to raise awareness about the need for “digital civility” and to pledge to every day live up to the four Digital Civility Challenge ideals:
Angela Shearer from Microsoft says, “The road to change starts at home, at school and in the office. We are asking all internet users to pledge their digital civility on social media using the hashtags #challenge4civility and #Im4digitalcivility.” ( see http://bit.ly/2luYZis)
How does South Africa fare when it comes to ‘digital civility’?
in 2016 Microsoft undertook research in 14 countries among teenagers and adults to study the level of civility. South Africa ranked in 14th place in the Digital Civility Index, making it the country with the highest online risk exposure and lowest degree of Digital Civility out of all the nations surveyed including Australia, Germany, India, France, the UK and US. The survey polled teens (ages 13-17) and adults (18-74), asking about their experiences and encounters with 17 different online risks across four categories, namely behavioural, reputational, sexual and personal/intrusive. (see http://bit.ly/2lv0s8s)
South Africa not doing well on the Digital Civility Index
Contributing to this poor result is the fact that 78% of participants surveyed reported having been exposed to an online risk, which exceeds the international averages for both Intrusive and behavioural risks. Moreover, South Africans encountered reputational risks more often than international (22% vs. 18%) and this is led by doxing (14%) and damage to personal reputation (11%). Doxing is the practice or researching and then broadcasting private information about someone online.
Over seven in ten South Africans reported a consequence from exposure to an online risk. This was slightly higher than the international average. In general, the top ten consequences were experienced at the same or higher levels in South Africa compared to international.
As a result people become less trusting of others.
Whose responsibility is Digital Civility?
Angela Schaerer Teacher Engagement Lead for Microsoft South Africa was quoted on IT News. She believes that Digital Civility is everyone’s responsibility. South Africans need to be accountable for their online behaviour and to serve as role models and/or champions for others. “a time to take stock of online habits and practices to ensure we’re putting our best digital foot forward and in doing so it will make it easier to establish and help foster safe as well as inclusive interactions online.”
(see http://bit.ly/2luYZis)
Get trained on the Microsoft Educator Community
Microsoft offers so many free, online courses on relevant topics. Teachers, take a look at this one on Digital Citizenship on the Microsoft Educator Community:
https://education.microsoft.com/GetTrained/digital-citizenship
Summary of resources from Microsoft and others that will be of great help
Remember to diarise Safer Internet Day on Tuesday Feb 6th in 2018
Will you take the Digital Challenge?
Microsoft took the opportunity to introduce the term ‘digital civility’ – a plea to people around the world to treat each other with respect online. Microsoft has a long-standing commitment to online safety and urged Internet users to take the Digital Civility Challenge. The goal of the Challenge is to raise awareness about the need for “digital civility” and to pledge to every day live up to the four Digital Civility Challenge ideals:
- Live the Golden Rule. I will act with empathy, compassion and kindness in every interaction, and treat everyone I connect with online with dignity and respect.
- Respect differences. I will appreciate cultural differences and honor diverse perspectives. When I disagree, I will engage thoughtfully and avoid name calling and personal attacks.
- Pause before replying. I will pause and think before responding to things I disagree with. I will not post or send anything that could hurt someone else, damage my reputation, or threaten my safety or the safety of others.
- Stand up for myself and others. I will tell someone if I feel unsafe, offer support to those who are targets of online abuse or cruelty, report activity that threatens anyone’s safety, and preserve evidence of inappropriate or unsafe behaviour.
Angela Shearer from Microsoft says, “The road to change starts at home, at school and in the office. We are asking all internet users to pledge their digital civility on social media using the hashtags #challenge4civility and #Im4digitalcivility.” ( see http://bit.ly/2luYZis)
How does South Africa fare when it comes to ‘digital civility’?
in 2016 Microsoft undertook research in 14 countries among teenagers and adults to study the level of civility. South Africa ranked in 14th place in the Digital Civility Index, making it the country with the highest online risk exposure and lowest degree of Digital Civility out of all the nations surveyed including Australia, Germany, India, France, the UK and US. The survey polled teens (ages 13-17) and adults (18-74), asking about their experiences and encounters with 17 different online risks across four categories, namely behavioural, reputational, sexual and personal/intrusive. (see http://bit.ly/2lv0s8s)
South Africa not doing well on the Digital Civility Index
Contributing to this poor result is the fact that 78% of participants surveyed reported having been exposed to an online risk, which exceeds the international averages for both Intrusive and behavioural risks. Moreover, South Africans encountered reputational risks more often than international (22% vs. 18%) and this is led by doxing (14%) and damage to personal reputation (11%). Doxing is the practice or researching and then broadcasting private information about someone online.
Over seven in ten South Africans reported a consequence from exposure to an online risk. This was slightly higher than the international average. In general, the top ten consequences were experienced at the same or higher levels in South Africa compared to international.
As a result people become less trusting of others.
Whose responsibility is Digital Civility?
Angela Schaerer Teacher Engagement Lead for Microsoft South Africa was quoted on IT News. She believes that Digital Civility is everyone’s responsibility. South Africans need to be accountable for their online behaviour and to serve as role models and/or champions for others. “a time to take stock of online habits and practices to ensure we’re putting our best digital foot forward and in doing so it will make it easier to establish and help foster safe as well as inclusive interactions online.”
(see http://bit.ly/2luYZis)
Get trained on the Microsoft Educator Community
Microsoft offers so many free, online courses on relevant topics. Teachers, take a look at this one on Digital Citizenship on the Microsoft Educator Community:
https://education.microsoft.com/GetTrained/digital-citizenship
Summary of resources from Microsoft and others that will be of great help
- Internet Article on IT Web: Microsoft embraces “Digital Civility” and pledges to help create a safer, more civil Internet http://bit.ly/2luYZis
- The Safer Internet website: https://www.saferinternetday.org/
- Read Microsoft's article 'Building a Culture of Digital Civility' http://bit.ly/2lvdzXx
- Read the very interesting report 'Digital Civility Index - South Africa' here:
- http://bit.ly/2lv0s8s
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saferonline
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/safer_online
- Website: www.Microsoft.com/digitalcivility
- Blogpost 'Microsoft releases Digital Civility Index, challenges people to be more empathetic online' http://bit.ly/2lv1VM3
- Digital Citizenship free online course. https://education.microsoft.com/GetTrained/digital-citizenship
Remember to diarise Safer Internet Day on Tuesday Feb 6th in 2018
Wednesday, 8 February 2017
Three EdTechTeam South Africa Summits featuring Google in Education this year – which one will you attend?
Every year for the past few years the EdTechTeam based in the United States has held a very successful Summit featuring Google for Education in South Africa. These have always been incredibly inspiring events where teachers go home with a myriad of exciting classroom ideas. This year THREE of these summits are planned for South Africa in different areas.
If you live in Cape Town Richard Knaggs from Parklands College recently sent out an invitation:
Register for the two day Summit event to take advantage of the early bird pricing here: http://za.gafesummit.com/capetown"
Register here for the one day iPad Edu Master class here: http://za.gafesummit.com/capetown#workshops
Which Summit will you attend? Visit https://za.gafesummit.com/ for more details and to register
EdTechTeam South Africa invites you to join them at their upcoming Summits featuring Google for Education. Enjoy two days of empowering hands-on workshops, inspiring keynote speakers, and fun activities including a high-energy demo slam where you can win prizes. Go beyond the tools and explore cutting edge best practices in educational technology and great teaching! Workshops are going to be led by Google Certified Innovators, Google for Education Trainers, Apple Distinguished Educators, school leadership or teachers with a passion to share their work to help others raise their game as well. Register now to send teachers, administrators, tech directors, library media specialists, tech support staff, and anyone who is interested in finding out more about leveraging G Suite from Google for Education and iOS to support student learning.
Cape Town SummitIf you live in Cape Town Richard Knaggs from Parklands College recently sent out an invitation:
EdTechTeam
South Africa invites you
to join us for the Cape Town Summit
featuring Google for Education
In Partnership with Parklands College
to join us for the Cape Town Summit
featuring Google for Education
In Partnership with Parklands College
1. Cape Town Summit (4-5 April 2017)
Richard says, "We have negotiated lower pricing so that you can enjoy two days of empowering hands-on breakout sessions, inspiring keynote speakers, and fun activities including a high-energy demo slam.Register for the two day Summit event to take advantage of the early bird pricing here: http://za.gafesummit.com/capetown"
2. iPad EDU MasterClass (3 April 2017)
This one-day experience is designed to inform, inspire, and empower educators. Workshops include sessions for leaders, educators, and technical staff. Coffee and lunch are provided for all ticketed workshops.Register here for the one day iPad Edu Master class here: http://za.gafesummit.com/capetown#workshops
Tuesday, 7 February 2017
Educator Spotlight #5: Mr J.E Khumalo from Habeni Primary School
This is the fifth post in our series ‘Educator Spotlight’ highlighting South African educators who are encouraging the effective using ICT Technology in a school setting. In this post we focus on Mr J E Khumalo from Habeni Primary School in Kwazulu-Natal. f. The link to this series of posts can be found at http://bit.ly/2cSfEwG
KwaZulu Natal teachers participating in the Telkom Connected Schools Project have been an awesome group to work with and this is mainly attributed to the change in thinking by the school management teams. This month’s spotlight is on the enthusiastic Mr J.E Khumalo, the principal of Habeni Primary School who is also the Social Science teacher at the school. Mr Khumalo reports that being part of SchoolNet’s Change Leadership in ICT Integration program has helped him immensely as it has helped him realise that leadership is not about working in isolation but that is it more about sharing the workload with his team, where delegation does not mean abdication of responsibility. His senior management team has learnt that much is achievable when the school has a shared vision which pushes all stakeholders to work towards achieving the same goal for the school community. In the six months of Change Leadership for ICT Integration training has taken place, the SMT members have gained confidence in their leadership skills and are now more actively involved in the management of the school.
Mr Khumalo says, “Habeni Primary School will never be the same. This course has helped change our view on using ICT’s through changing our attitude. This has created an awareness on what is accessible for improved teaching and learning.”
For a number of years, Mr Chinsammy was the only teacher who had the skills to create mark sheets and use computers effectively and this caused teachers to constantly require assistance from him and this in turn created an additional burden on him. Habeni teachers attended Intel’s Getting Started and since then things changed; teachers have become independent and are creating mark sheets, typing exam papers and creating lessons using PowerPoints. Some teachers are now also exploring Encarta for offline research.
Mr Khumalo who also attended the ICT skills training said “I used to write all my question papers by hand then make copies for learners but now I type ALL my documents and this saves me a lot of time. I still struggle a little with PowerPoint but I am not worried because I attend after school computer lessons with my colleagues and I know that in time I will get it right.” The teachers at the school practice their newly learnt skills daily and sometimes work till late in the afternoon because practicing these skills can be fun!
Using Encarta excites Mr Khumalo. He reports that his learners love the fact that they are not limited to their text books for learning. They are now able to do research in class for projects and learning has become practical. Learners watch Social Science experiments, short videos and find pictures of which makes learning much more meaningful.
“This project requires a lot of time from us, and it is all worthwhile. This is personal and professional development that helps us go beyond our call of duty to help our learners be hopeful of a better future” Mr Khumalo can’t seem to express in words the joy and fulfilment that the Telkom Connected School project has brought to the school and he encourages all teachers to be actively involved when opportunities like these arise.
KwaZulu Natal teachers participating in the Telkom Connected Schools Project have been an awesome group to work with and this is mainly attributed to the change in thinking by the school management teams. This month’s spotlight is on the enthusiastic Mr J.E Khumalo, the principal of Habeni Primary School who is also the Social Science teacher at the school. Mr Khumalo reports that being part of SchoolNet’s Change Leadership in ICT Integration program has helped him immensely as it has helped him realise that leadership is not about working in isolation but that is it more about sharing the workload with his team, where delegation does not mean abdication of responsibility. His senior management team has learnt that much is achievable when the school has a shared vision which pushes all stakeholders to work towards achieving the same goal for the school community. In the six months of Change Leadership for ICT Integration training has taken place, the SMT members have gained confidence in their leadership skills and are now more actively involved in the management of the school.
Mr Khumalo says, “Habeni Primary School will never be the same. This course has helped change our view on using ICT’s through changing our attitude. This has created an awareness on what is accessible for improved teaching and learning.”
For a number of years, Mr Chinsammy was the only teacher who had the skills to create mark sheets and use computers effectively and this caused teachers to constantly require assistance from him and this in turn created an additional burden on him. Habeni teachers attended Intel’s Getting Started and since then things changed; teachers have become independent and are creating mark sheets, typing exam papers and creating lessons using PowerPoints. Some teachers are now also exploring Encarta for offline research.
Mr Khumalo who also attended the ICT skills training said “I used to write all my question papers by hand then make copies for learners but now I type ALL my documents and this saves me a lot of time. I still struggle a little with PowerPoint but I am not worried because I attend after school computer lessons with my colleagues and I know that in time I will get it right.” The teachers at the school practice their newly learnt skills daily and sometimes work till late in the afternoon because practicing these skills can be fun!
Using Encarta excites Mr Khumalo. He reports that his learners love the fact that they are not limited to their text books for learning. They are now able to do research in class for projects and learning has become practical. Learners watch Social Science experiments, short videos and find pictures of which makes learning much more meaningful.
Looking into the future, Mr
Khumalo says that he would like his school to have internet access so that his
teachers can prepare and present more exciting lessons and allow learners the
opportunity access more learning resources. His ideal school is one where each of
his learners has access to a connected laptop or tablet throughout the day.
“This project requires a lot of time from us, and it is all worthwhile. This is personal and professional development that helps us go beyond our call of duty to help our learners be hopeful of a better future” Mr Khumalo can’t seem to express in words the joy and fulfilment that the Telkom Connected School project has brought to the school and he encourages all teachers to be actively involved when opportunities like these arise.
Monday, 6 February 2017
Useful Microsoft in Education posts this week #89
The Internet is currently full of posts about using Microsoft products effectively in the classroom. Here are a number of them from this past week. The list is embedded below but can also be found at http://bit.ly/2kd6QkF The link to the back-dated posts is http://bit.ly/1GVLTUZ
Educator Spotlight #4: Erika Esterhuizen – Have you discovered SharePoint?

Erika describes herself as “a natural leader where problem solving, and decision making skills are part of my personality.” She is currently employed by St Andrews College in Grahamstown, South Africa, as Head of Department: Information Technology. Her motivation in education is based on ICT integration opportunities and using these to make teacher, parent and learners daily tasks easier. In 2016 Erika won the coveted ‘ISPA 2016 TechTeacher of the Year ‘ award presented by the CoZa Foundation. Erika says “It is my passionate belief that the use of technology in any career changes lives, families, communities and ultimately, nations.” Erika has also been exploring the use of Microsoft SharePoint.
Are you wondering what SharePoint is all about? Erika says “I enjoy exploring the potential of Microsoft’s Sharepoint. SharePoint is a place for running daily workflows and processes, which I am still learning and exploring. SharePoint is not a single tool, but rather a platform that enables a lot of different educational activities.” Microsoft SharePoint is a browser-based collaboration and document management platform It is Microsoft's content management system. It allows groups to set up a centralized, password protected space for document sharing. It is not a program, it is a platform. It is a server product. You don’t install it because it is not a program. You connect to it. It has six different areas namely sies, composites, communities, insights, content and search. It makes sites. It gives you a place to put your content instead of putting it into local folders. It lets you search itself. It gives insights to bringing the information together. When you open Office 365 you’ll notice the link to SharePoint as shown in the image above.
Erika started using SharePoint about a year ago and has described it as 'a never ending learning curve'. Currently she uses it mostly for document sharing and collaboration.
When she started at her school, she found herself accountable for the examination invigilation time table for 100+ staff members during the examinations. She used SharePoint for this. She created an Excel spreadsheet with the grades and their subjects divided into timeslots, shared and sent each staff members the link and let them fill in the timeslots and days they prefer to do invigilation. This worked well. “I also created a calculation sheet which calculate their sessions and it is easy to see which staff member has not enough sessions filled in. This ensures that all sessions are covered.” Erika says she is planning to use SharePoint for swimming galas and athletics meetings by using Excel in SharePoint. "All participants in their individual items should be captured beforehand. On Sports Day, the document should be available on all the tablets of the officials. First the place allocation should be entered by place holder officials. Time keepers can then enter the times of each place immediately, points for each learner could be calculated and certificate could be printed thereafter, without walking or running around by officials.”
Erica plans to keep exploring the potential of SharePoint and share this with the rest of the teachers. She says “Once every two weeks we as staff members have a period called Curriculum Development (CD). Here, we often show each other what we have done something interesting in your class with technology or guidance is given of how teachers can use technology to make their workload lighter by setting up quizzes and marked by computer, doing report and planning some kind of project using technology. Co-workers really appreciate and follow those who are truly passionate about technology.”
'SharePoint for your Classroom' video
If you are a teacher looking to collaborate and communicate with your students, in class and beyond SharePoint could be just what you are looking for. Here is a Microsoft Virtual Academy video entitlled 'SharePoint for Your Classroom' http://bit.ly/2ka2bzP featuring Sonja Delafosse from Microsoft.
Ways teachers can use SharePoint as a classroom management tool
- Announcements: this enables teachers to post important information, for example reminders about tests and assignments.
- Class discussion: similar to an online forum, students are able to post questions or participate in discussions.
- Links: teachers can post links to useful websites.
- Class documents: the document library feature allows teachers to upload classroom resources for example worksheets, assignments, videos and much more.
- Course syllabus: the list feature in SharePoint allows us to create and customise columns containing different types of information. In this example, teachers are able to post information about the course syllabus.
- Calendar: here teachers are able to post important event information for example test, assignment and exam due dates as well as to attach relevant information to the event, similar to Outlook.
Think about exploring using Microsoft SharePoint in some of these ways this year.
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