Nearly three weeks into a “Improving Teaching Through Technology” programme, Mako S Williams, CEO of iLabGlobal and The Caribbean Tech Genius Foundation said that the hope is that teachers will grow their technological teaching skills and lesson plans.
The Rotary Club of Antigua, and The Bellevue Breakfast Club (Rotary), through this initiative has been delivering a Systemic Technology Integration Training Series (STITS) since June 28 until July 18, collaborating with the Ministry of Education, iLabGlobal Inc and the Caribbean Tech Genius Foundation (CTG).
According to Williams, teachers have been learning how to design lessons and match them to technological activities based on grade level and subject area to improve students’ engagement in the classroom through the STITS training.
“In the training, we support them building technology-integrated lesson plans using customised templates designed by iLabGlobal, as well as resources that are curated specifically to make it easier for them to insert technology throughout their lesson and make it meaningful,” Williams said.
“We take them step by step…to build out a lesson plan that they are expected to deliver in term one of the 2023-2024 school year, at which point, they will provide evidence of teaching the lesson to us,” she said.
Educators across Antigua and Barbuda could win several prizes, including 15 laptops for their classrooms, as well as several projectors, once they are successful in completing the annual technology training facilitated by a partnership between the public and private sectors.
The goal, according to a press release, is to train over 150 teachers, and Williams said that the mission is to have multiple stakeholders advance the region’s human capital resources by supporting STEM skills and computational thinking.
Since 2020, successful alumni of the program have been invited to join the train-the-trainer program, sustainably expanding its reach within schools, with some teachers expressing that their students now participate in class enthusiastically through the use of this tech-based “pedagogy.”
