Developing Talents Through Creative Play

Hands on are delighted at being awarded this fantastic opportunity to make a difference and show the value of an intervention at the Early Cildhood Development stage.

Project Brief :

• Supply 5 schools with LEGO Education kits for learners to be able to build and construct their own understanding of basic concepts and provide them with the problem solving skills necessary for them to survive in the ever evolving technological world.
• Provide all the teachers with initial training on all the kits and all the content that goes with the kits, classroom management and integration with all other subjects.
• Provide teachers ( Grade R to Grade 3 ) with appropriate content to cover the whole Design & Technology curriculum - including posters and extra resource material.
• Provide teachers ( Grade 4 to Grade 7 ) with teacher guides and concept guides to cover the content in the learners workbooks.
• Provide learners ( Grade 4 to Grade 7 ) with workbooks to guide them through the concepts, assist them with recording their findings, demonstrate use of the new concepts in real life models, pose new problems for them to solve, rubrics to evaluate their solutions and many other extension exercises and activities.
• Continue with ongoing training for the teachers - classroom visits - to work with the teachers and the learners.
• Training some of the teachers to be come trainers for other schools - and subventing the teachers who progress and work within the project.

The project involves adding 5 new schools every year for the next 5 years. Research will also be conducted, so that we can understand the impact an intervention like this does and can have.

Extract from the LEGO Education - June 2009 Newsletter

What Africa needs right now

What should worry us is that Africa’s development is going to be stopped in its tracks by the shortage of suitably qualified Scientists, Technicians, Engineers, Accountants, and Teachers of these subjects. These people all come from the numerate disciplines, and they are in increasingly short supply all over the developing world, but Africa has a particular lack of them, as insufficient provision was made for their development and training in the past.

It is going to be necessary to increase the educational provision of all African states in the very near future, so that our learners have the basic grounding in Math’s, Science and Technology that will enable them to take up the opportunities that are available in Science, Technology, Engineering, Accounting and Education throughout Africa.

The point is it is no use throwing money at the problem, as that will not make it disappear. It is necessary to assess educational processes as an integral part of the creation of educational policy and management; this is particularly true in African countries where the optimization of the allocation of their resources is an absolute necessity, to address the challenges that a radically changing Africa will present.

OTHER PROJECTS

Hands On ( and previously with 'the big picture' ) has undertaken various projects outside of the conventional school environment. We continue to seek out projects of this nature and are encouraged by the progress of learners using our maths, science and technology solutions.

For more details or possible involvement in projects of this nature, please contact Brent Hutcheson on brent@handsontech.co.za or on 082 3240 933.