4. Proposed project activities

In order to meet the project objectives, the following activities will be executed.

a. Creating an International Advisory Team

A maximum of 15 people will be invited to form the International Advisory Team of the project. The team members will be selected on the basis of their expertise in the areas of teacher training, educational reform, and educational applications of information and communication technologies in Africa. A limited number will be chosen to provide an international perspective of the rapidly changing developments in applicable technologies.

The Advisory Team will form an electronic discussion group to:

• discuss and suggest refinements to the proposed project methodology;
• reflect on the experiences gained during the implementation of the project;
• provide relevant knowledge and experience to facilitate the project;
• peer review the training courses and other products developed in the context of the project.

b. Participating in National Policy and Sectoral Workshops

In the framework of the "Harnessing Information Technology for Development in Africa" project, national policy and sectoral workshops will be organised for the development of national information and communication infrastructures. The sub-project will facilitate the participation of officials of Ministries of Education and teacher training colleges in these workshops.

During these workshops the important contribution of ICTs, and in particular the Internet, to teaching and learning will be discussed. The aims of the discussions are to:

• create awareness among policy makers of ICTs' potential contribution in improving access to and quality of learning opportunities;
• commit policy makers to include teacher training colleges in the National Information and Communication Infrastructure plans;
• identify members of the national task force that will be responsible for the implementation of the sub-project at the national level.

An outcome of the meetings will be Governmental agreements to develop and implement national plans of action within the framework of the sub-project: "Creating Learning Networks for African Teachers".

c. Establishing National Task Forces

Following Governmental agreement, a national task force will be appointed with members representing national telecommunication operators, public and private Internet providers, experienced Internet users, Ministry of Education representatives (educational planners, educational policy makers and curriculum developers), and teacher educators.

The task force will be responsible for:

• developing national plans of action;
• connecting the teacher training colleges to the Internet;
• providing adequate training
• establishing a national WWW site;
• creating a national electronic discussion group;
• monitoring and evaluating the networking activities of the teacher training colleges;
• participating in the international discussion groups.

d. Preparation of national plans of action

The national task force will develop national plans of action that address:

• selection of the participating teacher training colleges, based on the following criteria: appropriate representation of rural and urban colleges; provision of both in-service and pre-service training; availability of a library; availability of a staff member with some computer knowledge;
• technical arrangements for the connection of the colleges to the Internet;
• potential contributors to the national discussion group;
• designation of the host for national educational WWW site;
• organisation of technology-supported project activities in the areas of: professional development of college staff; collaborative development of curricula for pre- or in-service teacher training; production of locally relevant learning materials; activities at the school or community level, using the Internet as a learning tool.

e. Development of training courses on the potential and use of the Internet

An international consultant will be contracted to design training courses on the use of the Internet for teaching and learning, targeting different groups of learners: ministry officials, teacher trainers and teachers. In view of the expected continuing rapid advance in ICT both in terms of both technology and applications, the training programme will be reviewed and updated every year, thereby also benefiting from the experiences gained with the project. The designed courses will be evaluated by the national task forces, based on the identified needs for training, as well as by the International Advisory Team.

The training courses will be delivered primarily through workshops, organised at the level of the teacher training colleges, and made available in hard copy form and on the Internet.

f. Organisation of regional workshops

Two series of regional workshops (each composed of a five-day English and a five-day French language meeting) will be organised. The aims of the first set of workshops, to be held as soon as possible after the appointment of the national task forces in the participating countries, are to:

• familiarise national task forces with the project's aims and objectives;
• prepare national task forces for their specific responsibilities;
• validate the national action plans;
• validate and adapt the training courses on the use of the Internet for teaching and learning.

The second set of workshops will be a mid-term project evaluation. The national task forces will report on the progress and problems concerning the project implementation and make recommendations on corrective action and follow-up. Each national task force will designate two experienced Internet users, one educator and one telematics specialist, to participate in each series of regional workshops.

g. Organisation of national workshops

The aims of the workshops are to:

• provide on-site training on the potential and use of the Internet for teaching and learning;
• establish the dynamics for national and local learning networks;
• develop activities at the level of the colleges.

The national task forces will organise each year one training session at each of the participating teacher training colleges. A maximum of 30 participants (teachers of the TTCs and surrounding schools, local education officers, and other interested and relevant parties) will be invited to the training sessions. In the first year the workshops will encourage the creation of learning networks at the national and local levels. In the second and the third year, the workshops will reflect on the experiences of the project.

The teacher training colleges will be encouraged to provide additional training opportunities for their teachers and students, whenever required.

h. Establishment of (electronic) learning networks.

The aims of the learning networks are to:

• establish mechanisms for communication among key players in the provision of lifelong learning opportunities;
• provide a platform for discussions on enhancing the role of teacher training colleges as information, communication and learning resource centres, and in particular the potential contribution of ICTs to this end;
• provide training on how to use the Internet for learning purposes;
• engage teacher training colleges and their students in community-based learning activities.

The network discussions will be continual and divided into four streams covering: i) the concept of lifelong learning, the specific learning needs of African communities, and the potential role of teacher training colleges to address these learning needs; ii) the use, requirements and limitations of ICT applications, specifically the Internet, for learning and teaching; iii) the development of collaborative activities, and iv) exchange of experiences within the implementation of the project.

The discussion groups will be established at three levels:

1. Local level;
2. National level;
3. Regional level;

At the local level, teacher training colleges will each create links with a maximum of four schools in the surrounding area. Teachers, parents and students of those schools will be engaged in discussions, training and project activities at the college or appropriate community centres.

At the national level, the national task force will create a list server, linking the teacher training colleges with the Ministry of Education (typically a national curriculum development unit), research institutions, NGOs and other interested parties through common denominator store-and-forward mechanisms.

At the regional level, the national list servers will feed into three electronic discussion groups in English, French and Portuguese respectively, moderated by African experts who are required to have excellent working ability in at least two of the three languages.

An international consultant will be contracted to monitor and trouble-shoot the establishment of the necessary electronic linkages and list servers among the participating institutions at both the national and international levels.

i. Building local resource centres

Each teacher training college will be equipped with at least one computer with full Internet connection and reproduction facilities. If required, public telephone operators, apprised of the importance of the project through the ITU, will provide the necessary telecommunication channels to the colleges. The computers will be placed in the college library or documentation centre, thereby enhancing its function as "information resource centre". The resource centre will be made accessible to college staff and students, as well as to the teachers of the surrounding schools, and, in the context of pilot projects, their students..

Teacher training colleges will be encouraged to explore the availability of relevant learning resources on the Internet on their potential contribution to the:

• professional development of teacher educators and teachers;
• management and administration of learning activities;
• collaborative development of curricula and instructional materials;
• provision of educational opportunities for specific groups of learners.

The reproduction facilities will offer the opportunity to make relevant resources on the Internet available to a larger group of users.

j. Creating national WWW sites for African Teachers

A public Internet provider will be identified and contracted to create and host the national educational WWW site. This site will include the proceedings of both the national and the international discussion groups as well as links to other relevant national, regional and international sites. Each teacher training college will be encouraged to develop WWW pages for teachers in Africa that will be fed into the national WWW site.

k. Collaborative curriculum development

The participating countries will be engaged in collaborative curriculum development activities for the training of teachers (in- or pre-service), using computer-managed instruction systems (CMI) available on the Internet. Priority areas will be identified in the regional discussion groups.

Benefiting from the experiences in the regional context, the teacher training colleges, working in collaboration with central services in their Ministry of Education, will develop with a group of teachers, in the framework of their in-service training, locally adapted curricula for use in the classroom or at the community level.

A CMI system should not be confused with computer assisted instruction. It merely provides a tool for curriculum design and management of learning experiences, based on the specific learning needs of a particular learner group. National and international collaboration among the CMI users in the participating teacher training colleges will be facilitated through groupware, adapted to the tasks at hand, either integrated in the CMI system or as separate modules.

l. Using the Internet as a teaching-learning tool

Based on the training and experiences gained with the project, the teachers at the participating teacher training colleges will design learning pilot projects using the Internet. Limited numbers of students from surrounding schools will be invited to the colleges to participate in the projects. The aims of these pilot projects will be to:

• assess the feasibility of using the Internet to improve teaching and learning in African schools;
• identify basic requirements for Internet applications at the school/community level.

m. Preparation of evaluation report

In the middle of the third year, an external evaluation team will be contracted to assess the achievements of the project in the context of its aims and objectives, the contribution of ICT use for teaching and learning in the African situation, and opportunities to ensure sustainability, adaptation and extension of the activities initiated by the project.

The evaluation team will be comprised of two persons: a teacher education specialist, and an expert in information and communication technologies, both preferably with experience in Africa.

5. Related projects and activities

Africa has recognised the important role of teachers and teacher training colleges in the process of educational change. Innovative approaches that aim to establish new dynamics for the training of teachers, and to enhance their role in the teaching-learning process, can be found in many countries. In the eighties, for example, the Zintech colleges in Zimbabwe promoted on-the-job teacher training programme in order to find a better match between educational theory and classroom practice. Zambia's Self Help Action Plan for Primary Education (SHAPE) aims to strengthen professional capacity of rural teachers through linking schools with teacher training colleges and the establishment of school/college-based resource centres.

The potential additional contribution of the ICTs to the provision of better learning opportunities is currently being explored at many different levels. Electronic discussion groups are being established, country home-pages being created and activities for the educational use of ICTs implemented. The "Technology Education Curriculum for South African Schools" project (TECSAS) of the St. Alban's college technology centre in South Africa aims to develop relevant curricula for secondary schools, using an Internet-based computer managed instruction system (CMI) that is designed for customised curriculum development and management. Similarly, the Telecommunications Foundation of Africa (TFA) has initiated a project in Kenya: "Information and Communication technology for Secondary Education: Courseware Development and Delivery Methods". With support of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a regional project is currently being prepared on the training of African school directors at a distance, benefiting from new information and communication technologies.

Other examples are joint UNESCO/ITU projects: one aims to set up four pilot multi-purpose telecentres in Africa for the enhancement of accessibility of information in rural communities, including support for literacy and learning; the other focuses the use of interactive television for teacher training through a pilot project in Morocco.

The proposed sub-project will benefit from and build on to the experiences of such existing and planned projects. The institutions involved in their execution will be invited and encouraged to participate in the electronic learning networks to be created.