Excellence in Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Learning Award
Name: Ms Nikki Potgieter
School: La Rochelle Girls’ Primary School, Paarl
District: Cape Winelands Education District
Ms Potgieter is an inspiring, energetic, purpose-driven, highly skilled and dedicated teacher at La Rochelle Girls’ Primary School. She is an advocate for the use of ICT in teaching and learning and showcases her proficiency and competency in all of her projects, educational initiatives, and school events.
She is innovative in her use of digital tools such as Google Classroom, Book Creator, Plickers, Screencast-o-Matic, to mention but a few. She has even created digital games based on Scrabble to improve literacy in the English subject. She has digitised and adapted the curriculum to accommodate the learning needs of every child in her classroom. Her lessons are media-rich, consisting of video resources that she has created herself as well as empowering her learners to create their own videos. Further examples of her ingenuity are the creation of interactive eBooks, gamification, automated assessments, hypermedia, and even using ICT in sports and cultural administration in a creative and analytical way.
Ms Potgieter has redefined her role by providing support for other teachers in the use of ICT to enhance teaching and learning. She capacitates teachers as a facilitator for the Cape Teaching and Leadership Institute (CTLI), Limina, Centre for e-Innovation (CeI), as well as serving as a mentor to novice teachers at her school. As a lifelong learner, she has successfully completed an Advanced Certificate in Computer Integrated Education with the University of Pretoria as well as completing Coding and JavaScript courses.
She believes that the only constant is change and that teachers need to prepare learners for careers and jobs that do not yet exist. She developed a classroom methodology called RIDE (Research, Investigate, Discuss, and Explore), these principles serve as the cornerstone of her teaching and learning process, which aims to enhance 21st century learning skills. She uses SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition), as the ICT integration model to develop learners’ 4IR skills and competencies.
Ms Potgieter makes valuable contributions to the school, not only in the ICT sphere, but also in the extracurricular and co-curricular activities such as drama, sport and other cultural activities. She promotes learner and colleague participation by empowering learners as leaders.