This year's training included the Intel Innovation in Education - Teach to the Future, Oracle's Think.com programme, Ford Foundation's Global Education Initiative and the development of an open source version of the educator's network database.
"The Microsoft Partners in Learning training that started this year has been successful so far, in giving teachers the confidence to use ICT themselves, as opposed to in their classrooms with learners," says Janet Thomson, SchoolNet SA CEO.
So far 2 374 teachers have undergone ICT training for the first phase of the Mircosoft Partners in Learning training, says Thomson.
"The training programme was devised with a practical and realistic approach to training teachers in schools in that a range of activities was made available for individual customisation, seeing as almost all groups of teachers at schools contain a range of computer literacy and experience.
"ICT teacher education is a cross-curricular area that has not been included in any one learning field. It has not become the responsibility of any standards-generating body," she says.
"The national Department of Education works at the level of negotiating with funders as to which programmes should be implemented in the country. They have supplied us with free copies of the South African Institute for Distance Education manual for principals on introducing ICT in schools. Provincial departments are now starting to appoint personnel responsible for ICT in the curriculum and we are working with those officials in each province," she says.
Commenting on the GautengOnline schools project, Thomson says: "One key concern for us has been the preoccupation of hardware installation without the vital professional development element to accompany roll-out. We would advocate that the GautengOnline programme should improve its understanding of the concept of integrating educational ICT, and in particular the most effective methods for its implementation.
Bureaucratic quagmire
"The Western Cape Education Department used to be leading the way in implementing ICT in schools, but unfortunately there are now so many sections of this provincial department dealing with ICT, their implementation of innovative programmes has become bogged down in bureaucracy.
"Some sections of the Western Cape Education Department also tend to have a preoccupation with technical training or computer literacy and have therefore not fully utilised their ICT curriculum personnel, who definitely do have the best understanding of educational ICT in the country.
"SchoolNet SA tends to focus on teacher training. We have the Microsoft agreement, which has provided free software to all schools in the country. SchoolNet SA relies on the e-schools network for schools' technical requirements," says Thomson.
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