WCED makes it easier for teachers to collaborate
12 June 2020
The Covid-19 pandemic emphasised the need to find ways to continue education delivery and advance communication channels whilst at the same time create safe and responsible ways to manage the continuation of curriculum delivery.
Therefore, the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) eLearning Directorate worked in partnership with the Directorate Knowledge Management, Chief Directorate Districts, CeI and Microsoft to successfully upload over 30 000 teachers to the Educational Microsoft Tenant, giving them Office 365 online accounts.
The Office 365 online account gives teachers access to the full bouquet of the Office 365 online applications. This access includes Microsoft Teams, which is an application enabling collaboration and teamwork. Staff across the WCED will thus be able to chat by instant messaging, video calling, voice calling, file-sharing, engaging in virtual meetings and real-time collaboration by using MS TEAMS.
Teachers are reminded that the use of the service and the provincial email are intended for professional, school or education-related engagements.
Several related training opportunities are provided by the Cape Teaching and Leadership Institute (CTLI), the Directorate eLearning teams and the Provincial Western Cape Government ICT Training Unit. Training related to ICT integration and online applications can be sourced at https://wcedctli.co.za/.
The Directorate eLearning has created a Remote Teaching and Learning Emergency Pack for teachers (https://wcedeteacher.wixsite.com/eteacher) with modularised content to help strengthen remote teaching and learning practices. This website is considered as a self-paced learning opportunity and is aimed at teachers to strengthen and develop their remote teaching and learning practices. It aims to develop teaching skills and explore learning tools to facilitate remote teaching and learning.