From left, (top to bottom): In-house digital instructors from MPC and Sundial Anurodh Gadjri, Anouschka Shewpersad, Taryn Hassell, Marcus Nicolaas, Norisza Fleming and Nicole Williams-Wynter. Not pictured: Asheda Maccow, Cindy York, Latoya Omzichtig and Renaldo Baker.
EBENEZER--Teachers of Milton Peters College (MPC) and Sundial School successfully completed a training and preparation week on Friday, August 14.
From 2012 onwards the School Board for Secondary Education SVOBE has embarked on a journey to increase the use of technology in teaching. In 2017, technical coordinators were appointed to train teachers in the use of Google classrooms, smartboards and other various platforms.
According to the school board, teachers were not completely unprepared when the decision was made in March to resort to social-distanced learning. There is nevertheless a big difference between utilising technology and online tools in regular on-site lessons and providing full online teaching. Online learning requires more advanced skills and practice as well as adaptations to most of the regular class content and homework.
SVOBE expressed pride in the MPC and Sundial teachers who tried their best to make the sudden transition in March as smooth as possible for both themselves and students, but the challenges and workload were huge. That is why the school board decided to start the 2020-2021 academic year with a full week of online training and time to prepare online lessons and materials.
Ten tech-savvy teachers provided their colleagues with hands-on workshops and coaching online. At the end of the week, all teachers had to prepare and give an online lesson in their subject to their colleagues to practise and experiment.
“The critical elements in online teaching and testing were officially assessed by the instructors to determine the skill level per teacher and to ascertain who needs additional coaching and training,” said the release.
Teachers also received additional information and ideas on differentiation, to be able to deal effectively with backlogs and the increased differences in knowledge, understanding and skills among the students due to the coronavirus COVID-19 situation.
“I would like to thank not only the facilitators of these workshops, but also all teachers who actively participated with an open mind. We all can’t wait to see the students face-to-face in our classrooms again, but for now we are eager to meet our students in Google classroom,” said Interim General Director of the SVOBE Schools, Jacqueline Duggins-Horsford.
