Heideveld teacher takes classroom online
12 June 2020
Riefqah Sasman, a teacher at Heideveld High School and last year’s provincial winner for Technology-Enhanced teaching and learning, has been teaching online during the lockdown.
Sasman created a website for term 2 and engaged with learners on Google classroom. The English First Additional Language teacher also made provision for learners without internet connectivity and shared all content and interactive resources with them on WhatsApp. “Learners were then able to contact me and access my worksheets and tutorial videos via WhatsApp in the middle of the night when using the night time free data. Sometimes I would have learners contact me at 1am! But I allowed this because I understood their circumstances. There was no other way.”
Sasman has been teaching for 13 years and said she fell in love with technology in the classroom to the extent that she is pursuing her B.ed Honours in Computer-Integrated Education. “Remote learning, digital learning and learner centered pedagogy are key elements that drive my passion for e-learning and the positive of this lockdown was when I could explore and discover new ways of engaging my learners in the way they want to learn (with technology). I was definitely in my element here and took full advantage of it!”
During the lockdown, she was part of the team at the Cape Teaching and Leadership Institute that developed and facilitated an online course for teachers to assist with remote teaching and learning. She also creates English FAL lesson plans and content for the WCED ePortal for Grades 10 to 12.
“As my website was shared amongst colleagues across the Western Cape, different teachers (whom I have never met in my life) reached out to me and asked permission to use it for their learners and this was the very thing I wanted to achieve! So imagine my delight. Collaboration and sharing of knowledge and resources are two of the skills needed to prepare for the 4th Industrial Revolution and this is the type of culture we would want teachers to adopt. Ubiquitous learning is also something I push with my learners with game-based, project-based, research-based, coding and creativity-based activities.”
Visit Ms Sasman’s online classroom at the following link: https://tinyurl.com/SASMAN-CLASS