Travel to Senegal and Reflections

During my travel and visit to the schools in Senegal I learned much more than I taught. My capstone question for this trip was how do schools in Senegal Africa use technology to improve global learning and 21st century skills. These skills are universally recognized as having a direct impact on the progress of the country as well as the marketability of people to gain and maintain jobs and careers in the near future. 

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  The summer has been long. I still have moments where the heat of Oklahoma reminds me of Kolda. Senegal has forever changed my perspectives on what we have here in the U.S. We often complain (myself included) when the internet slows down or the web page does not open instantly.  

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  In my class, I see students with 1-1 Chromebooks at the 3rd grade level and 1-1 iPads down to Kindergarten, and I wonder am I making the most out of those gifts. The children even in High School living in Kolda (and I would guess most of Senegal and Africa) don't have the same access to the world that my six year old students do.  

  During my travels in Kolda, I found that most students (teens) have a phone but data is too expensive to use it as casually for informational needs as we do here in the U.S. The kids know what is available in the world but lack the information and opportunities that technology provides even at its basic usage levels. 

   While NGOs and other organizations have great intentions in providing computers or equipment, they seem to often lack the prerequisite needed to be successful in using them... training the people to use them.  What I feel is needed the most is an organized attempt to not only provide some equipment but have people willing to stay in Senegal for the time needed to train the users to maximize the technology provided.  I would like to see a program where people (like me) would take the equipment to the school districts, implace it, and train the initial users on it. A second tier would be to train a train the trainer at the district level. This person would then go out and train other teachers at lower levels until each school had a tech savy person on hand to fix and help others learn how to use the technology. 

   I think this is the next part of my journey. Helping establish this network and hopefully go back to Kolda to begin the initial steps to this plan. Time to go to work...Tinty are you in?? :)