 Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to be able to share with you my thoughts on educating teachers for the future. But before I do so, I would like to apologize for failing to come and participate in data personally. As the commonwealth of learning, we value data because we know it's giving the African continent an important forum to deliberate on issues pertaining to teacher education. On this note, congratulations to Dita for having made 10 years since 2005 when Dita was launched. I hope we'll position ourselves even better for the new challenges ahead. Now, turning to the subject of this meeting, I'll be answering the question, what must we do to effectively prepare teachers for tomorrow? To answer this question, we shall discuss some predictions for the future, implications of these predictions to teacher education, and some of the innovations we need to help us prepare teachers for that future. We know that human predictions may not be 100% accurate, but predictions still do help us plan for the unknown. And that's why we rely on weather forecasts. We depend on governments to draw budgets, visions and government plans. There have been a number of different predictions by futurists, information technology gurus and other agencies. The National Intelligence Council of the USA has for example released global trends 2030, alternative worlds. And in this document they make many predictions regarding global developments by 2030. Some of these predictions are about one population growth and demographics, technology and its expanding influence, jobs needed and jobs that will disappear, and then the diffusion and nature of power both at international and national levels. In this discussion I will however focus on predictions around three things and these are populations, jobs and technology. Let's talk about the population first. The world's current population is about 7.2 billion and this is projected to grow to about 8.3 billion with 60% of this population living in urbanized areas. It's also predicted that migration will increase. Africa is likely to have about 1.6 billion people by 2030 and this number will grow to 2.4 billion by 2050. Like the rest of the world 60% of this population will live in urban areas. The implications to education of a growing population like that will be 1. increased demand for education 2. the need for increased investments in education 3. the need for more teachers to cope with this growing population and the need for lifelong education to provide for older populations requiring retraining as market demands change and also the need to specifically address education needs for peri-urban and slum populations. According to UNESCO and I quote an extra 3.3 million primary teachers and 5.1 million lower secondary teachers will be needed in classrooms by 2030 to provide all children with basic education. UNESCO also identifies that Sub-Saharan Africa alone will need 2.1 million new teachers and another 2.6 million to replace losses due to attrition implying a total need of about 4.7 million teachers. To meet all these needs I believe we need to hone our strategies in increasing access to education this should go beyond brick and mortar but should include addressing issues of quality and relevance. Implementation of universal primary education in many developing countries has shown that simply building more and more schools and getting many more children to appear in schools is not yielding results in the quality of learning outcomes. Increasing access must therefore be accompanied by improving quality. In teacher education we need to train and retrain more teachers to meet changing demands using flexible methodologies. We also need to increase efficiencies in teacher education by improving completion rates, reducing teacher attrition, providing more relevant timely and high quality teacher development and ensuring clear career paths. Let's talk about technology now. Thomas Frey has predicted in his 2013 blog called The Futurist that by 2030 the world's largest internet company will most likely be in the education business. The seeds of this are evident already in the growth of open courseware, the emergence of MOOCs and the growing power of social media. Bill and Melinda Gates also say and I quote, as high speed cell networks grow and smartphones become as cheap as today's voice only phones, online education will flourish. End of quote. They also predict that little children will be able to use smartphones to learn hand numbers and letters. There will be software to support such children. Students will be able to collaborate with teachers and other students in a much richer way. This may already be happening but its spread and reach will be much greater. Gates however concludes that despite all this huge promise that technology will bring. Quote. There is one thing software will never do. Replace teachers. End of quote. So, if there is going to be such a revolution in what technologies can bring into teaching and learning and yet not replace the teacher. What type of teacher will then be needed? The answer may seem obvious. Education will need a teacher that can adequately handle technology and use it for maximum benefits for the learners. Education is transitioning from a teaching to a learning model and will instead therefore need coaches, facilitators and course designers. The truth ladies and gentlemen is that a traditional teacher will no longer be needed. So, how prepared are teacher education institutions to produce the new kind of teacher needed. I believe teacher education institutions need to keep abreast of changes taking place, ensure regular and frequent curriculum reviews and transformations, invest in technology and ensure continuous professional development for teacher educators as well. We have to move beyond believing that it's only teachers that need continuous professional development. Teacher educators need this just as well. In addition, there is need to also reflect on the following questions. Who gets admitted into teacher training? What skills and competencies do the teacher trainers have? What type of curricula are in place? How is training being conducted? How much control do the learners have of the teaching and learning contract? What kind of resources and technology are being used? And how are these being used? What kind of skills and competencies are teachers going out with? And lastly but not least, how effectively are ICTs woven into the entire teacher education fabric? Besides, a lot more care is needed in determining when and how teachers are actually deployed, the nature and quality of continuous professional development, the support provided to teachers and the career paths available to them. So yes, technology can drastically change teaching and learning, offering more opportunities for creativity, innovation and greater learner participation and control in learning, but the teacher will still be needed. The skills, competencies and roles of this teacher will therefore have to change. The onus is on us as teacher educators to rise up to this challenge if we are to make a difference. There are a number of current initiatives with the use of open educational resources like TESA, or out by the Commonwealth of Learning, the Khan Academy resources and so on. There are also MOOCs, there is increased use of learning management systems and there is the one tablet per child in Ethiopia, in Kenya and in South Africa. However, these need to be expanded and institutionalized. At the same time, there ought to be commensurate changes in other education systems and structures as well. There ought to be a coherent approach to transforming teacher education. We can no longer afford to work in silos. Rul change will happen when we work together. Teach education institutions together with the different organs of ministries of education, accreditation agencies, examination councils along with parents and guardians. Let's talk about the third prediction, jobs. This is the last prediction I wish to discuss. And according to Thomas Frey, 2 billion jobs will disappear. Most of this will come back but in different forms. Most jobs will be freelance projects rather than full time jobs. These new jobs will bring with them demand for additional or totally new skills. The implication of this is that all training institutions will need to transform their programs and training strategies to cater for demands for new jobs and new skills. Some of the skills that will be most needed in this new economies will be learning and innovative skills including critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration. We'll also need information media and technology skills. And thirdly, we will need life and career skills which include flexibility, adaptability, initiative, self direction, leadership and responsibility. I must say ladies and gentlemen that the foundation of each of these skills is laid in schools. Teachers in the schools and teacher educators in teacher education institutions must therefore of necessity have these skills and have the ability to help learners acquire these skills. One of the biggest mistakes Africa has made in the past is to assume that these soft skills can only be given in colleges and universities. Children spend the most years of their lives in schools ranging from 10 to 13 years as opposed to the only 3 to 6 years that they spend in colleges or universities. Let's take full advantage to prepare these children for the new job climate. To produce teachers with these skills teacher training institutions will need to do the following. We need teacher educators with these skills. We need to transform curricula to include these soft skills. We need to integrate technology in teaching and learning, in assessment and in research. And we need to prepare teachers to be global citizens. There are already a number of country and regional efforts at transforming teacher education. The common wealth of learning is for example working with a number of governments and institutions on a variety of innovations. For example, we are working on helping institutions integrate ICTs in teaching and learning with supporting institutions to convert their face to face of print based programs into e-learning programs integration of OER MOOCs the revision of curricula the development of various policies and guidelines but a lot more is still needed. So in conclusion I like to say this none of us knows for certain what the future holds for us but there have been some predictions based on current happenings and on our history as humanity. In this presentation we've shown that population in Africa is exploding, technology is here to stay and the market plays as new demands. The implication for this is that teaching must shift from a teaching to a learning mode current programs and strategies will not prepare teachers effectively for tomorrow so teacher education must change. There are already many innovations can we expand and institutionalize this to ensure effective and sustainable teacher education. Thank you for listening to me and now I'd like to leave you with this as food for thought. We need to prepare students for their future not our past. Now please take time to click our questions as given in the last slide. Thank you very much.