Sascha Wil­son

A teacher at Rio Claro East Sec­ondary has placed sec­ond in the first Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) pho­to com­pe­ti­tion. A pho­to tak­en by Derek Ram­datt of a stu­dent work­ing on her Sec­ondary Based As­sess­ment (SBA) beat back more than 100 oth­er en­tries through­out the re­gion and was judged sec­ond best. Ram­datt, who teach­es agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence, was pre­sent­ed with his gift on Fri­day by CXC Web-mas­ter Si­mone Pas­more, of Bar­ba­dos. In mak­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, Pas­more said CXC's vi­sion was to en­sure a glob­al com­pe­ti­tion thrust through­out the Caribbean. She said they al­so recog­nised the in­te­gral role of so­cial net­work­ing in ed­u­ca­tion.

Ram­datt, a teacher for 14 years, made no apolo­gies for be­ing an avid "Face­book­er." In fact, he said that was where he came across the com­pe­ti­tion. Ram­datt, who en­gages his stu­dents with on-line in­ter­ac­tions, said many peo­ple, in­clud­ing teach­ers, were ap­pre­hen­sive about us­ing so­cial net­work­ing as a medi­um for learn­ing. Giv­en the ad­vances in tech­nol­o­gy, how­ev­er, he said that was the di­rec­tion in which ed­u­ca­tors should be head­ing. Ram­datt said in the first term of last year he in­tro­duced a Web site which he used to trans­mit in­for­ma­tion to his stu­dents and re­ceive feed- back. He be­lieves that con­tributed to an im­prove­ment in the stu­dents' grades in the last ex­am pe­ri­od.

He sug­gest­ed that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­move blocks on Face­book and You Tube on school com­put­ers, since the two sites were ed­u­ca­tion­al and in­ter­ac­tive. Ram­datt said he some­times us­es pho­tos post­ed by his Face­book friends from around the world in his class. How­ev­er, he agreed that stu­dents need­ed to be close­ly mon­i­tored by par­ents and teach­ers on those sites. He urged stu­dents not to use so­cial sites to en­gage in "mud-sling­ing, or to put down any­one." Cur­ricu­lum of­fi­cer Sel­wyn McK­night was hope­ful that Ram­datt's achieve­ment would en­cour­age stu­dents and teach­ers to en­gage in sim­i­lar ac­tiv­i­ties.

As she con­grat­u­lat­ed Ram­datt, prin­ci­pal Anne-Marie Bha­jan said the use of so­cial por­tals was a com­mon fea­ture in to­day's world. Un­for­tu­nate­ly be­cause of its fre­quent abuse and mis­use, she said, neg­a­tive sto­ries grabbed the head­lines. She said per­sons, in­clud­ing stu­dents and celebri­ties, post­ed in­ap­pro­pri­ate pho­tos and com­ments, elim­i­nat­ing the pos­i­tive side. "We are hap­py to have a counter to those head­lines," she said. The com­pe­ti­tion, which ran from Au­gust to De­cem­ber 2010, was won by Ja­maican stu­dent Steven Smith. The win­ning pho­tos will be used by CXC on its Web site and in ad­ver­tise­ments.