The SSA Webinar Series: Emerging Trends in Education

These trends are really important in order to help empower learners in our classrooms to face the challenges of the world they are likely to encounter when they become adults. We are preparing them for jobs that don’t exist yet, so there is no way that the old “Chalk and Talk” method will be useful in this instance. To prepare students for the skills they will need when they reach their version of the working world requires a new, fresh approach. We need to redesign the way we teach so that our learners can redesign the way they think. This, in turn, will help to empower them to know how to navigate the world they will face one day. 

While there are many countries in the world that are changing the focus of education, Africa seems to be trailing behind. This is a serious problem, as Africa is considered the next emerging market. As a continent, we have some of the world’s fastest-growing economies but we currently rely on allies and relatively limited available resources to function. According to the UN 2012 population reports, Sub-Saharan Africa will contribute the highest percentage of the global workforce by 2035. This is a scary thought when you take into account that 22% of Primary schools in Africa don’t even have electricity. And, while a large portion of learners attend primary school, attendance drops considerably to only 30-50% of learners across the continent attending Secondary school. 

Google for Education hopes to empower teachers to help their learners overcome these obstacles and be prepared for the world they will face when they are in the global workforce in 2035. Enter the Emerging Trends for African Education Webinar series. These sessions were incredibly inspiring for the teachers who participated and were able to implement the ideas and tools in their classrooms. We can see the impact of these sessions on the cohort and how they have found new inspiration and excitement for teaching and learning in their classrooms. With all the wonderful tools that Google has to offer to aid in these trends, it really is a no-brainer to include them in as many classrooms as possible. 

Each session required us to build multiple resources. The first was a slide presentation. These were used throughout the sessions, to tell the story of each trend and how the relevant Google Tools can be used in a classroom. These slides required hours of research and exploring; working through information online and reading reports that would enable us to understand the impact that mastering these trends could have. We also consulted subject matter experts and spent time researching and mastering the tools ourselves. It was an undertaking that demanded hours of time and a deep understanding before we could compile the content. The demand of developing and presenting a new session every two weeks further meant that we worked within considerable time constraints.

Only once we understood the tools used, what impact these tools would have on teaching and learning, and how to effectively integrate them in the classroom, could we shift our focus toward building the content for the session. Branded presentation slides were built, custom vector files for graphics were created, and what felt like millions of images were curated in order to incorporate an African feel that embodied the Google for Education brand.