President Cyril Ramaphosa and the department of basic education have announced a nationwide roll-out plan for coding and robotics. In preparation, forward-looking schools are already running coding classes in South African classrooms.
Teachers from Forest Village Leadership Academy and Kleinmond Primary School in the Western Cape as well as St Dominic’s Priory and Charles Duna Primary in the Eastern Cape have taken part in an online teacher professional development course in 2020. Hosted by Code School Finland, the Finland-based education company is helping educators to implement a 21st century skills program. The training has prepared the participating teachers to effectively teach coding in their classrooms.
Learner-centric approach for 21st century skills
The participating teachers were trained online by Finnish education specialists to leverage Code School Finland’s design-based project learning model and teaching materials. Teachers will facilitate multidisciplinary, open-ended programming projects for their students. This learner-centric approach empowers teachers and learners to practice 21st century skills for a brighter future in the South African context.
“Two of our educators are currently running the program and they are excited to be learning alongside the students. We look forward to many success stories coming out of this program for our learners and our school”, said Tamara Grant, Deputy Principal of Forest Village Leadership Academy.
Teacher training and certified teaching materials available
Code School Finland (CSF) in co-operation with their South Africa based partner Contextualize aims to assist educators in the implementation of a 21st century skills program as part of the South African education curriculum. The CSF curriculum covers coding, robotics and artificial intelligence for grades R to 9. Materials include student books, lesson plans and assessment tools for teachers. The plan is to train teachers from all schools, ranging from top private to public schools, either self-funded or through donor funding.
To sign up for training programs or support donor programs, please contact:
Contextualize (website)
Western Cape:
Dr Marcus Duveskog
marcus.duveskog@contextualize.co.za
tel. 079 458 2271
Eastern Cape:
Dr Ron Beyers
ron@yesa.org.za
tel. 083 310 8843
Code School Finland
Sales Director Ville Lintervo (ville@codeschool.fi) +86 135 8568 3473