Internet | Meet Internet Super-User Debs Saunders

By The Newsletter Team

Debs Sanders is a teacher who is passionate about educating both her learners and herself. She is also a vocal proponent of GetSmarter’s UCT Internet Super-User course, where she was in the first group of students. Debs shares a bit about herself, and about why she thinks anyone can benefit from the course.

Debs matriculated in 1985 and studied her BA in Education at Wits. She then did her BA (Education) Honours through Unisa. She has worked in her current post at St Benedict’s College in Johannesburg for eight years, and teaches computers to preparatory school learners. She finds the work enjoyable but challenging, mainly due to the trickiness of getting the technology working properly.

Debs truly loves learning and has a passion for trying out new courses. She particularly found online distance learning suited to her lifestyle, since she can work and learn at the same time, and log on at any time to work on assignments and chat with fellow students. Debs really enjoyed participating on the forums. “I found this to be an amazing learning experience. The constant feedback from the course coordinators was excellent and I was never made to feel that any of my questions or queries were irrelevant.” She also found she learned a tremendous amount from fellow students of all different levels of experience.

Debs also found that the course contributed a lot to her teaching. “For the age group that I teach, there is no national curriculum,” she explains. “However, the course has helped me tremendously because it is has opened new learning areas for me that I have already started to use, especially the blogging and social networking – which obviously have major appeal to them. We developed blogs for the grade 5 history theme of famous explorers, which helped the students learn about the topic in an exciting and different way.”

Debs thinks the course in invaluable for shifting teachers’ mindsets about the internet. “Although we live in a technological society, many teachers are ignorant of the amazing features of the internet. Often, teachers equate the internet with games and unruly behaviour, but this course has revealed a whole new aspect of the internet – learning meaningful skills in a fun way.”

Before Debs did the course, she had two main leisure activities – reading and walking. She has found that online ebooks have vastly increased her access to a wide range of reading materials. Now she has added a third hobby: “surfing the net to find new and interesting developments.” She says the course has given her the ability to keep abreast of current developments – a vital skill in our technology-driven world.

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution license.