Between Border Crossings and Sightseeing: More Teachable Moments

Photo credit: Anusheh Hashim

After an all too short lived month travelling through South Africa as a presenter at the EdTech Summit Africa, I’m back in the United States. Sigh. Travelling is too much fun! Since publishing my previous blog post, the EdTech Summit team and I completed the second half of our journey which took us through Swaziland, Durban, East London, Cape Town, and Pretoria (actually, some of the team continued to Ghana, but I had to return to the States for work obligations) with each location presenting a new set of unique challenges and triumphs. We successfully continued to work through more internet outages and overcame frustrations that sometimes come with training workshop participants who arrive with little-to-no technical proficiency. For now, I’ll reflect on highlights from the rest of the Summit circuit.

After Mpumalanga, where I last wrote, our next stop was Limkokwing University of Creative Technology in Mbabane, Swaziland. When we first passed through the border from South Africa into this tiny little country, the Kingdom of Swaziland, I at first found it indistinguishable from its much larger neighbor through which we had travelled for two weeks prior. The arid landscape looked similar, the currency is valued the same as that of the South African Rand, and there are Nando’s restaurants where one can enjoy their famous flame-grilled Peri-Peri chicken just like in South Africa. Nonetheless, my naive assumptions were challenged shortly upon arriving.

Limkokwing University in Mbabane, Swaziland

Once the Summit at Limkokwing concluded, we drove seven hours to Durban and held a Summit the next morning at Inanda Seminary School just 20 miles (about 30 km) away. Inanda is a beautiful independent Christian boarding school for girls founded in 1834 by American missionaries. The school’s staff was extremely accommodating and the facilities were exceptional. For me, the most significant outcome of this Summit was connecting with a few educators who were interested in game design for learning and who were already participating in some of the very few game design and maker space initiatives in South Africa, such as Make Games SA and The Maker Space Durban. After a successful Summit in Inanda, the next 72 hours would be quite a doozie (I hate that word, but it’s fitting) given the amount of travel time and lack of sleep between Summits packed into such a short period of time.

We immediately got back onto our little nineteen-seat bus which had taken us through the country from the very beginning in Johannesburg and began the long nine hour drive to East London. We arrived to the hotel at 2:30am and got about three hours of sleep in our beds before leaving at 6:00am to begin our next Summit at Stirling Primary located just up the road from the hotel. After consuming a potentially excessive volume of caffeinated liquids, we got to Stirling where we again had the privilege of working with more very accommodating staff and access to awesome facilities. I particularly loved the layout of the computer lab I used as it was set up in a way that the teacher can see the screens of every student from his or her desk.

From Stirling, we packed up the Summit materials and our personal belongings and set out on the fourteen hour trip to Cape Town. Everybody was quite exhausted at this point since we’d barely slept and little escape from each other since we’d spent so much time sitting shoulder to shoulder on a bus for nearly 20 hours within a 72 hour period. Nevertheless, we arrived to Cape Town safely the next morning around 7:00am thanks to our patient and skillful driver, Daniel. After being dropped off at our AirBnB lodging, we were free to bathe and enjoy the beautiful day (and finally go our separate ways for a bit).

​The next morning, we held a Summit at LEAP Science and Math School Langa Campus located in the Langa township of Cape Town, one of the oldest townships in the area that was designated for black South Africans during Apartheid under the Urban Areas Act. This school is particularly near and dear to the hearts of EdTech, not only because they are a partner organization, but because some of the presenters had taught at Leap.In fact, Kevin Baloyi, our youngest presenter, and someoneI became particularly close with during the trip, is a teacher in training at Leap. While Leap’s facilities were not as up-to-date as those of Stirling and technical hiccups were more prevalent, all workshop objectives were met and teachers left more knowledgeable with strategies for integrating tech and multimedia into their classes that they can bring to their schools. From there, we hung out in the Township and enjoyed a delicious homemade dinner at Lelapa Restaurant located right around the corner from Leap.

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Double-rainbow over Langa. Photo credit: Karen Blumberg

​For the next four days, the Summit crew and I enjoyed Cape Town at our leisure before continuing to Pretoria, where we would hold our last Summit in South Africa. Some of us spent time with family and friends while others and I did some sight seeing, hiking, wine tasting, and lots of eating. My colleagues Anusheh, Karen, Thandekile, and I were up before dawn to hike Table Mountain’s strenuous yet breathtaking Plaateklif Gorge to see the sunrise as we ascended.

Me doing a crooked headstand on the Summit of Table Mountain. Probably the coolest picture of me that I’ll ever have

For me, the highlight of this leg of the trip was our visit to Robben Island, home of the infamous prison where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of the 27 years he was incarcerated before the end of apartheid. It felt pretty surreal to walk through the prison’s facilities and I was struck by its dark history, but the most impactful part of the tour was the fact that our tour guide, Isaac, had actually done time there as a political prisoner from 1982 to 1987. He gave us a firsthand account of his experience as a prisoner, including his daily routines, prison conditions, and the gruesome ways in which he and other inmates were tortured.

Top left: Exterior of cell block edifices. Top right: Cell dormitory. Bottom Left: Nelson Mandela’s Cell. Bottom Right: Isaac, our tour guide

On Saturday, August 30th, the last EdTech Summit of 2016 in South Africa was held at University of Pretoria’s Mamelodi Campus (remember, there was one more in Ghana at iSpace in Accra). By now, the team and I were pros at setting up registration, putting up signs, and preparing rooms and devices. I again had the pleasure of engaging with educators who wanted to learn how to incorporate game design into their classes as a way to engage their students in computational and critical thinking. One guy who works for Project Isizwe told me that he was planning on starting a podcast where he and his guests would discuss education technology. I hope to hear from him soon so I can post a link!

I feel extremely fortunate for having been able to work with South African educators while simultaneously learning about their country’s history, landscape, and diverse cultures. It was profoundly rewarding to be able to share my knowledge and skills with those who need them. What’s more is that they challenged me to be patient and clear in my demonstrations and to see to it that they left my workshop knowing and being able to do more than they had before entering. Of course, it would be remiss of me not to emphasize what a pleasure it was to work alongside the presenters of the EdTech Summit, especially our fearless leader, Karen “K2” Page. Every person brought their own unique set of abilities and ideas to the table and, moreover, a willingness to share their craft with one another.

I look forward to learning about what EdTech Summit Africa has in store for the future and hope that I can continue to be involved in some way. For now, I must focus my efforts on skill-sharing at the 2016 Scratch Conference at MITin Boston from where I am writing this piece. Maybe I’ll bring the resources I gain here to future EdTech Summits? Thanks again to K2 and shout out to the rest of the presenters for making the experience so incredible! See below for more info on the EdTech Africa Summit:

​EdTech Summit:
Website: www.edtechSummitafrica.com
Blog: edtechSummitafrica.tumblr.com
Twitter: @EdtechSummitsA
Facebook: EdTech Summit Africa
Instagram: edtechSummitafrica
Hashtag: #ETSA16