zibuza.net

South Africa

Online Professional Learning Community

Zibuza.net is a professional learning community that connects teachers with their peers as well as the multitude of stakeholders in the basic education ecosystem. Our goal is to harness to knowledge, experience and investment of the collective ecosystem to make a significant impact in the quality of education outcomes.

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Overview

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All information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been checked by HundrED.

Web presence

2015

Established

26.4K

Children/users

1

Countries

Organisation

Not-for-profit

Target group

All

Updated

March 24th, 2023

Zibuza.net serves as a voice for all teachers!

About the innovation

Simply Learn.

What we do?

Zibuza.net aims to systematically improve teacher capacity and the adoption of 21st-century practices by providing an Internet-based platform that harnesses the combined knowledge, experience and investment of the collective education ecosystem to enable e-learning and improve the quality of education outcomes. Our members get access to:

Teachers, learners and parents get free access to 1000s of quality educational resources including lesson plans, classroom activities, past exam papers and memos, study guides, videos, posters in all phases, grades and official languages.
Teachers get access to networking opportunities to connect and engage with their peers as well as the stakeholders including learners and parents, governments, businesses, education agencies, unions, CSIs, NPOs and professionals.
Teachers get access to Continuous Professional Teacher Development opportunities via courses and events for their personal and professional development.
Teachers are recognized and rewarded for their participation and contributions to the greater community. We aim to provide an efficient way for schools to reinforce positive teaching and learning behaviours amongst teachers, leaders and learners as a means of increasing their motivation to academic outcomes.
We offer a podcast “The Education Show” covering various topics aligned to our mission to unlock opportunities in teaching and learning through collaboration.
A Mentorship programme for knowledge transfer and sharing, through a discussion forum.
We are building new features and functionality to provide teachers with tools to deliver 21st-century learning experiences. The goal is to harness the combined knowledge, experience and investment of the collective ecosystem to enable e-learning and improve the quality of education outcomes.
Through our Virtual Classroom (launching Q3 2021), we aim to build resilience into our basic education system by leading with sound pedagogy that is enabled by technology and a collaborative ecosystem that works in unison to create teaching and learning environments that can cope with future crises while also delivering quality education outcomes that are inclusive and equitable.

Why we do it?

Online learning has become a critical lifeline for education. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools moved to online distance learning via platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams etc. Research to date has however indicated that most online classes aren’t as effective as in-person classes for most learners.

Just like in brick-and-mortar classrooms, it is evident that online courses need a strong curriculum and strong pedagogical practices. Teachers need to understand what students know and what they don’t know, as well as how to help them learn new material. By leading with sound pedagogical practices like Understanding by Design (UbD), Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Project-Based Learning (PBL), Differentiated Instruction (DI) and Learning Pathways (LP), we believe we can enable transformative and engaging e-learning that empowers teachers and improves learner outcomes.

We are embedding these pedagogical frameworks into our online classroom feature to help teachers collaborate with their peers and other stakeholders to clarify learning goals, devise revealing assessments of student understanding, and craft effective and engaging learning activities within a country’s standards-driven curriculum. We will address learner deficiencies in both speed and depth by providing teachers with tools to effectively implement Differentiated Instruction in their online classrooms.

Thus, we can build resilience into our global education system by leading with sound pedagogy that is enabled by technology and a collaborative ecosystem that works in unison to create teaching and learning environments that can cope with future crises while also delivering quality education outcomes that is inclusive and equitable.

Media

Knowledge Sharing & Transfer

Zibuza.net facilitates knowledge transfer and sharing through a mentorship discussion forum.

21st-Century Learning

Our online classroom includes features and functionality to empower teachers with tools to deliver 21st-century learning experiences. We aim to build resilience into our global education system by leading with sound pedagogy that is enabled by technology and a collaborative ecosystem that works in unison to create teaching and learning environments that can cope with future crises while also delivering quality education outcomes that is inclusive and equitable.

Networking Opportunities

Teachers get access to networking opportunities to connect and engage with their peers as well as the multitude of organisations in the basic education sector including government, businesses, education agencies, unions, CSIs, NPOs and professionals.

Access to Quality Resources

We are bridging the digital divide by providing teachers with free access to 1000s of quality educational resources including lesson plans, classroom activities, past exam papers and memos, study guides, videos, posters in all phases, grades and official languages.

Recognition and Rewards

Online communities are socially driven and typical activities include searching, authoring, sharing, rating, monitoring, discussing and collaborating. Thus, we are able to determine both quantitative and qualitative variables as indicators for our impact and progress. Quantitative variables include the number of members, resources, followers, posts, groups, pages, badges, tags, events, courses and invites. Qualitative variables include our sharing ratio, the breadth and depth thereof (uploads, views, downloads, ratings, reviews, shares), reputation and CPTD points as well as badges earned. These are all indications of how engaged our members are. We also measure user retention as an indicator of our value and relevance to members. All of this is visually represented on a reporting dashboard that will provide feedback to us and stakeholders on our impact and progress.

Holistic Educator Support

Students perform better if classrooms are led by enthusiastic, inspired and well-trained teachers. Teachers, however, often feel lonely and isolated and lack the practical resources and knowledge needed to run a successful classroom. We provide our teachers with access to training and a wide range of high-quality resources to enhance the delivery of our national curriculum and empower them to lead dynamic and effective lessons. Beyond the curriculum, we offer teachers access to soft skills like emotional and financial wellbeing to aid their personal and professional development.

Professional Development

The knowledge and skills that children need to succeed in the 21st-century society are changing all the time. Various education reforms have changed what and how teachers need to teach. In order to keep abreast of these changes, teachers need to engage in lifelong professional development. Research on Professional Learning Communities shows that when they are well practised, they contribute to improved teacher and learner learning and morale. Zibuza.net provides the settings and necessary support for groups of classroom teachers, school managers and subject advisors to participate collectively in determining their own developmental trajectories and to set up activities that will drive their development.

Implementation steps

Support Zibuza.net

If you are interested in funding zibuza.net, making a financial or in-kind contribution, or supporting our work in any way, please get in touch with us at info@drclsmith.org or malcolm@drclsmith.org

Partner with Zibuza.net

Zibuza.net is built for empowering partnerships to bring together a currently fragmented market to create a value-driven ecosystem that involves all stakeholders in basic education including teachers, learners, principals, parents, business, education agencies, government, professionals, CSI's and NGO's.

The Internet Transforms Lives

School closures in response to COVID-19 have shed light on various social and economic inequalities in our education system. If access to information, education and freedom of speech are considered human rights, should access to the internet be considered an extension of that? And if yes, whose responsibility is it to provide that access? And to what extent? We need advocacy to ensure that all levels of society have access to the internet and that all educational content is zero-rated.