📣 British Council & Department of Basic Education’s Digital Standards Development Consultative Workshop on the 25th October, held at the Birchwood Hotel & OR Tambo Conference Centre. Project Lead is Belle and Co. (Belisa Rodrigues), supported by Research Lead from Limina Education Services (Dr Isabel Tarling). And supported by Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.
💡 What is the Digital Standards Project?
The Digital Standards (or Guidelines) Project is a collaborative co-creative process that draws together diverse stakeholders from the education sector to develop digital standards for learning and teaching in South Africa’s schools and beyond.
📌 Milestone 1 (March/April): Input Document
The 8 month journey has taken us from developing a baseline research called the “Input document” which undertook an integrative literature review approach of all standards and policies related to digital teaching and learning. The Digital Capital Map (which consists of Digital Competencies, Digital Agency and Digital Citizenship).
📌 Milestone 2 (7&8 June): Consultative Roundtable 1
The first broad consultative conference on developing digital standards for digital teaching and learning in South Africa. Around 80 education stakeholders attended from a broad spectrum including academia, private sector, government and civil society including schools.
📌 Milestone 3: Online Working Groups
From June until September, the 6 standards working groups included: (1) Learner, (2) Educator, (3) Education Leaders, (4) Parents & Communities, (5) Service Providers & (6) Institutions and Infrastrucuture Standards. 24 meetings in total were conducted.
📝 Once standards were drafted, these were analysed and converted into google forms for voting by the public. The draft standards are still available for public input. Visit the project website to weigh in: https://sites.google.com/limina.co.za/dsdproject/
📌 Milestone 4 (25th October): Consultative Roundtable 2
Most recently, the working groups and others interested in finalising the draft standards were invited to an all-day workshop to walk, step-by-step, through each draft standard and to vote on them.
💡 Why digital standards?
The White Paper on e-Education (2004) provided South African education with a vision and long-term goals to implement digital learning in all education spaces. We need digital standards for different role players and for institutions to operationalise the White Paper in a practical and contextually relevant way.
💡 What are standards?
Standards are different to policies. Policies provide long-term goals, visions and guidance to entire corporations or countries. Standards operationalise policies in short-term or medium-term goals that target specific role players or institutional functions and processes.
📩 Please email me: Belisa Rodrigues (rodrigues.belisa@gmail.com) or send a message to ssa.events@britishcouncil.org.za (Subject header: Digital Standards Project)
