How do you define an "icy-cold technology", and what does it mean in this context?


Prof. Tania Vergnani: There is an advertisement for a South African firm that sells computer hardware that says their company is "where technology meets humanity". In 2005, when we initially created "Teaching and the AIDS Pandemic", our blended-learning course for tutors and lecturers in sub-Saharan African teacher-training colleges and universities, we were skeptical about the extent to which it would be possible to use an eLearning platform as a transformative learning space.


We did not believe that the personal and emotional work that must be done for AIDS education to be successful was possible in an online context - hence the term "Icy Cold Technology". We assumed that the online environment would be too "cold" and would not offer enough possibility for the more intimate sharing of experiences and feelings. Ironically, we proved ourselves wrong and are now the ones advocating interactive technologies that can and do go beyond what is possible in a classroom setting! Certainly Web 2.0 has done a great deal to humanize information technology, the internet, and what is possible with eLearning itself.


In which kind of "collective transformation" was ICT helpful?

Prof. Tania Vergnani: Sharing how the HIV epidemic has affected us personally is an important and necessary component of preparing teachers to respond to the many challenges HIV brings to their classrooms and learning. We initially thought this personal work must all take place within the eight-day face-to-face contact session of the nine-month course. Through the online interactive tools and the teaching methodologies we developed to go along with them, we increasingly witnessed teacher trainer participants in the course taking responsibility for the online course environment itself and expressing concern when any member of their group was absent from online discussions.


Part of the collective transformation has been for each of our groups to begin to act as a collective and to speak openly about HIV. This is a transformation that cannot be discounted. The silence that surrounds AIDS in Africa remains an impediment to prevention, treatment, and HIV education itself. One of the other transformations we see is participants transforming their relationship to the HI virus itself. They no longer fear talking about the virus. What they now fear is to remain silent about it. Finally, within this space of a transformed relationship to the virus and to silence, the participants together discover their agency and begin to act where they had never acted before.


It has been quite exciting for us to watch as our 150 former participants from six courses remain connected electronically through our interactive alumni network, taking ownership of the epidemic in their colleges, families, and communities. Together they are succeeding in creating new responses that centre around people (a central notion of the course) rather than information about the virus itself.


Could you describe the process?

Prof. Tania Vergnani: Our participants have come from teacher-training colleges and universities in nine sub-Saharan African nations. They come to us at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town for an eight-day face-to-face session in which we familiarize them with InWEnt/GIZ's GC21 eLearning platform that we use for the online phase of the course. While learning to navigate the platform, we also cover content lessons of the course.


One of our early mistakes was to separate content learning from learning to use the technology. When we focused on content and taught participants to use the technology to support the learning we were engaged in, they learned the eLearning ropes much faster and needed less technical support when they returned home. But you must be aware that in 2006 and 2007, we had several participants who did not know how to type and had never touched a keyboard before. These were people who always had someone to do their typing for them!


When participants return to their home countries and begin the nine-month interactive online component of the course, they are supported by an online tutor with whom they interacted during the face-to-face session. Experts are also online during each of the eleven course units that follow. What has supported and allowed for real change and transformation amongst our participants are the interactive tools we have added to facilitate personal sharing. In the "Breaking the Silence" section, for example, participants are able to share how deeply the epidemic has affected their lives and the lives of their families, communities, and institutions.


They are somehow willing and able to share more fully and more openly within this interactive, asynchronic environment than they are able to do in the face-to-face setting. "Breaking the Silence" is a part of the course that remains open throughout the course but is limited only to participants, the online tutor, and two course managers (ourselves), which helps it become the "safe space" for sharing that we intended it to be. It allows for participants to reflect on what has been shared by their colleagues and respond with caring messages of support.


It is remarkable to see how similar their experiences are and frightening to see that - nearly three decades into the epidemic - this is the first place many have found to speak of the hurt they quietly hold inside themselves. It is also interesting for us to see that within this "Breaking the Silence" tool, the section is "viewed" four to five times for every posting made by a participant. We think this means that participants are reading over other people's postings multiple times and finding some kind of value, perhaps solace, or perhaps a kind of healing in doing so. They certainly are finding healing through this electronic tool that helps them speak what has remained unspoken for far too long.


Do you expect more positive results in the future?


Prof. Tania Vergnani: Of course! In August of this year, we added mobile access to "Breaking the Silence" for those in the current course who have smart phones. We recognize that what they post is very personal and that one has a very personal and intimate relationship with one's phone, particularly at 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning, which is when some people are reading and posting their own thoughts, experiences, and supportive replies to others.


We are currently researching the value of mobile access to this component of the course and thinking about other possibilities in light of what we are learning. One of our biggest questions is whether the face-to-face session can be conducted using web 2.0 technology, eliminating the need and great expense of participants travelling to Cape Town for ten days and thereby freeing up funds so that more teacher educators and others could participate in the course and become a part of this active community of practice among teacher educators in sub-Saharan Africa who are responding to HIV.


What could the next step be?


Prof. Tania Vergnani: Perhaps we have covered this in the question above. Whatever step we take next or in several years time, our intent is to provide participants in the course with a very humanizing experience. Remember that our history of colonialism and, in South Africa, apartheid, intentionally undermined people's humanness. Our response to HIV has, sadly, done the same. Stigma has forced people to hide their disease and live in fear that someone might find out about a friend or family member who has HIV or who has died of AIDS.


The history of teaching has also been one of teachers instilling fear in students in the context of a system of rote education. Much of this is rapidly changing in schools these days, and teachers are aware of what they are not supposed to do. But imparting skills and experience that allow a new set of values of humanness and care to drive what goes on in classrooms is not a simple challenge. Our course is part of this effort and directly responds to this greater challenge. So you see, in the end, we are not simply teaching about HIV.


We are working to get teacher educators to discover new environments of care and empathy within themselves that they can rely upon to create new and similar environments in the classrooms where they teach. HIV has been the mechanism to get us there, and, we believe that if we can collectively "get there", then HIV will no longer be a problem in sub-Saharan Africa.