For two days in Johannesburg, the Noticeboard team joined educators, innovators and people working on the future of education across Africa. South African EdTech Week brought us into the same room, with time to listen, exchange ideas and share what we are building.
There were opening sessions, the Mastercard Foundation EdTech Showcase and conversations with people approaching education from different directions. Being there was exciting. But the question we brought home was a practical one: what should all of this mean for the people using Noticeboard on an ordinary school day?
Teacher First Integration
The conference theme, “Teacher First Integration”, gave us a clear place to start. Technology creates value when teachers can apply it to the problems they face in their classrooms. For Noticeboard, communication remains the foundation. We want to understand how that connection can better support teaching and learning.
Teachers arrive with different experiences and levels of confidence. Discussions about workload, preparation and mentoring reminded us that attending training is only a beginning. A teacher needs a chance to practise a real task, get help when it becomes difficult and use it again in their own setting.
That also means listening before adding more. A tool needs to fit the school’s curriculum, devices, connectivity and available time. If using it creates more work than it removes, we need to understand why.
From a school update to a learning activity
A notice reaching home is useful. The next question is what it helps a teacher, parent or child do. The conference discussions about coordinated support and evidence of learning encouraged us to look beyond the number of messages sent.
For example, a teacher might identify a skill learners need to practise, choose and review a suitable activity, and share it with families alongside a short explanation. A family needs to know what to do, and have an alternative if data, devices or printing are a barrier. The teacher can then look at the learner’s next attempt and decide what support is needed.
This is an example of the workflow we want to explore with schools. It is not a claim that sending an activity automatically improves learning. What matters is whether the support fits the lesson and what the child can do next.
Our purpose, made clearer
Our revised mission is to help every South African primary school turn confident teaching and connected families into stronger learning.
Teachers, learners and parents remain at the centre of Noticeboard. The conference helped us make the purpose of those connections clearer: supporting the everyday work of teaching and giving children useful opportunities to learn.
Teacher confidence, classroom practice and learner performance are different things. We need to understand each of them, rather than assume that progress in one proves progress in the others.
What we want to test next
Over the next 90 days, our proposed focus is one existing resource-sharing and parent-communication workflow around a problem teachers identify. We want to improve that experience before expanding the feature list.
We plan to begin by listening to teachers and school leaders, documenting access barriers and agreeing what to observe before the pilot starts. From there, we want teachers to try the workflow through repeated classroom activities, with short practical coaching and follow-up support through a partner.
At the end, we intend to review comparable learner work, teachers’ experiences and the time needed for setup, checking and support. A small pilot can help us decide what to improve; it cannot establish that Noticeboard caused a change in learning.
These are plans to work through with our pilot schools and support partners. Their feedback will help shape what is practical and what should change.
Thank you for the conversations
Thank you to Injini and the Mastercard Foundation for bringing this community together, and to everyone who made time to speak with us, ask questions and share their experiences.
We are proud to have represented Noticeboard at South African EdTech Week. We came home with ideas to explore, assumptions to check and a clearer sense of the work ahead.
Noticeboard — For the moments that matter.
