The Role of AI in EdTech

14 September 2023 @ Bootlegger, Cape Quarter | Injini
William Cronje
Katherine (Katy) Fourie
This event was funded by Injini, and facilitated by members of our EdTech Collective community. William Cronje and Katherine (Katy) Fourie opened up the evening with some fascinating research they’ve been doing, and the important lessons they’ve learned.

Participants then flowed through the venue to discuss 6 big questions related to the role of AI in online learning, from the threat it could pose to academic integrity, to how it can be used to augment the teaching process to create more personalised learning experiences.

A big thank you to Injini for partnering with us to bring this event to life, and also to Groundflr and Bootlegger Coffee Company for providing the venue.

AI and its Impact on Education Technology

16 February 2023 @ Google Meet | EdTech Collective members
Lunchtime chat
This virtual lunchtime chat was an informal discussion with a number of the EdTech Collective community members. We spoke about the new tools and techniques we’re all beginning to use, and some ways to engineer prompts to achieve the best outputs.

Failing Out Loud

13 October 2022 @ Construct Education | Groundflr x Construct Education partnership
Facilitated Break-Away Discussions
Hosted at Construct Education, our hosts (Ashleigh Wrensch and Karen Hilliard) shared their own experiences of failure and lessons learned. We then split into break-out group sessions, hosted by EdTech Community facilitators. Instead of discussing best practices or revolutionary techniques, dozens of EdTech professionals gathered to share the mistakes they’ve made in their careers.

The resounding message is this: embrace your failures and ditch the corporate shame!

Diversity & Inclusion in EdTech

28 April 2022 @ Craft & Graft | Groundflr x Valenture Institute partnership
Facilitator: Sebekedi Motlhabane Koloi 
Panelist: Landa Mabenge
Panlist: Silvana Barbali
Panlist: Tsepo Ngwenyama
This event was hosted as a Groundflr and Valenture Institute collaboration. The EdTech space is often considered to be recalibrating the playing field of education. However, access to quality education remains a persistent issue in the South African context. 

With this in mind, the panel discussed how we as online learning professionals can create content that is accessible to, and representative of, the end-user. This conversation also highlighted how important it is that the creators of content are themselves reflective of a diverse demographic - so that they are able to accurately capture the varied lived experiences of the learners.

The audience continued the conversation through a Q&A session, and we began thinking about how we, as a collective, can go about reconstructing how education has been thought about for centuries!

The Future of South African Education

November 2021 @ Bootlegger Coffee Company.
Speaker: Deidre Samson
This event was held during a relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions. In such fast-changing times, the EdTech Collective sought to explore the various change drivers and how they might impact the Global, and specifically South African, EdTech landscape. 

This topic was led by futurist Deidre Samson who drew from her expertise as an educator of futurism and her work as a consultant to paint a picture of the potential opportunities and threats for online learning. Deidre’s talk sparked lively discussion and a host of insightful questions and answers. 

Personalised Learning

September 2021 @ Zoom
Facilitator: James Lawrenson
Panelist: Lizzy Steenkamp
Panelist: Zack van der Schyff
Panelist: Kimera Moodley
Panelist: Mari Van Wyk
The aim of the EdTech Collective’s first ever fully online meetup was to draw from a panel of experts from academia, corporate, non-profit, and digital to explore how online learning can be ‘personalised’ to improve learning experiences.

Each panelist gave a unique view on the idea of personalised learning and how it can be applied in various contexts. Attendees of the session participated in a lively question and answer session at the end that continued the sense of shared learning.