The new year has barely kicked off, but Ridgeway College in Louis Trichardt has already sent its information and technology acommunication (ITC) teacher, Ms Carolyn Ingram, to the largest global educational technology conference (BETT) held in London this year.

“It is imperative that we begin to understand the importance of ITC and its applications in our changing world, especially for third-world countries to meet the challenge to participate in a fast-growing global knowledge economy. I have been working in ITC my whole life and this year’s conference offered many exciting new and user friendly ways to use technology to enhance the learning experience for students and alleviate the ever-increasing pressure on teachers. This is the kind of help we can do with in South Africa right now,” said Ingram.

Ridgeway College will host a feedback seminar on programmes that are available and invite all educators and interested parties to attend this free brain-storming session. Some of the topics Ingram will give feedback on are online learning (how to set up your school to exist in a virtual world), how to use the web as a better learning resource tool, how to make learning more interactive by getting learners more involved in their studies, setting up virtual classrooms and payment schemes to manage school administration better.

In addition, Carolyn will present classes on a variety of design and layout, web and graphics programmes during the course of the year. The first one starts in the first week of February. The Adobe Photoshop course is designed to introduce people to the world of digital creation, photo manipulation and retouching. The course targets people, both high school students and adults, who are non-proficient in computing, while still appealing to those who know a little bit and their general way around the programme. It will run over nine lessons, twice a week.

Persons interested in attending the free brainstorming session can phone Winnie at the college at 015 516 3908 or e-mail [email protected]. For more information on the Photoshop course, phone Elthea Schlesinger at 071 1914 467 or email her at [email protected]