They have taken footage from Hong Kong: Kowloon Walled City Park, PolyU, street scenes from Tsim Sha Tsui, students learning Kung Fu, students programming in teams, etc. From South Africa: students’ homes, school grounds, school uniforms and study scenes, slithering snakes, meerkats, zebras walking, lions feeding, …
The result is a collage of techniques and themes with some pleasantly surprising creativity. Asking Bruce Li to teach them Kung Fu. Calling Elon Musk to help bring Hong Kong students to see animals in South Africa. Contrasting zebras strolling in a safari with students practicing kung fu and just walking around on campus. Watching slithering snakes through virtual reality glasses. Touring each others’ houses through VR glasses.
It is quite pleasantly surprising how much can be learned and done through intermittent online interactions in 2 weeks time. In the beginning there was a lot of anxiety, shyness, awkward moments. The university students worked hard to engage the learners from Hong Kong and townships in South Africa. Gradually they open up and actively contribute to the project. The fairly sophisticated technology was not easy to master even for university students. There were tremendous technical challenges due to the exclusive reliance on online interaction without in-person contact, the poor access to the network and hardware faced by the township learners, … Despite all that they were able to stitch so much together into creative storylines.
One of our students asked whether we are making a real impact on the learners. This is an important question that should be considered at different levels. The learners were able to access technologies normally inaccessible to them. They seem genuinely interested and engage with the technology and the university students actively. From their laughters and spirited participation in the production of the videos it is evident that they enjoyed the experience. Hopefully they have become a bit more interested and confident in technology and experiential learning. At this level we can be confident we have made a modest impact on their lives.
Have we changed their lives in a significant way? Perhaps not. We certainly have not made them materially richer. They will continue to live their daily lives the same way as before. But we should also be realistic as to how much material impact we can expect to make in such a short period of time and budget. Our students have engaged with each of the learners for perhaps no more than 40 hours in total over roughly 2 weeks. We have no money to give to them.
It was suggested we could have given to the learners the funds that we spent on our students. It is, of course, not possible because that was not what the funds were allocated for. We have no authority to just give away the money. Even if we do, and did, it still wouldn’t be enough to change their lives in a meaningful, sustainable way. Exposing them to new technology, a more experiential way of learning, giving them a new experience by getting to know university students in their own country (and a different ethnic for learners in SA), getting to know children of their own age and university students from a different country, ethnic and culture, …, is probably something we have to be satisfied with, and potentially make a more sustainable impact.
From our perspective, the education of our students is the most critical of our many objectives. This is our real mandate and our best bet in making an impact. We spent the most effort, time, and resources teaching, training, reflecting, encouraging our own students. As we keep saying, we are not aiming to turn them into social workers. We are aiming to help them grow up into professionals of their own chosen discipline with a social conscience. It is through them that we hope to make the biggest impact on the community.
One of our students admitted surprise in the beginning finding white students at University of Pretoria, and asked where they were from originally. It turns out the white university students were born in South Africa. In fact, without white South Africans there would not have been a reason for Apartheid and all the associated injustice, conflicts, and ensuing problems. Cognitively she is not unaware of that. But the stereotypical “single story” of a black Africa is so entrenched that a white African still surprised her. It is the result of the social environment in Hong Kong, the distance, lack of contact, …, all contributing to a “single story” of “Africa” that prevails in Hong Kong. That she recognised it, and have the courage to admit it openly to the class is a step forward. Hopefully, this course has helped all parties involved gain a little more interest and confidence with the technology, a little more curiosity and better perception of an unfamiliar people and culture, a little more willingness to experience something different, a little more care and empathy for people who are different in so many ways. In that case we would have done our job.
Finally, teaching this subject is truly a team effort. It was a very bold project with so many challenges. There is the course planning, setting the direction to work with University of Pretoria, brining in learners from Hong Kong, bringing in the learners from the townships in South Africa, developing the technical content, arranging for the right equipment to be shipped such long distances and distributed to so many parties, developing the teaching plan, coordinating and running the training, classes, outings, storyline development, video editing, reflection sessions, … It is extremely taxing for just one teacher, and few, if any, persons can be good at so many aspects of such a project. We are practicing so many of the things we are teaching our students. All in all, a very satisfying experience for our great teaching team.
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