Lulu Burger

I have been involved in various roles in education and the integration of technology into schools over the past 11 years. Starting out as a teacher myself, I involved myself in the professional development of teachers over the years.

While teaching at Rand Girls’ School in Johannesburg, I became involved with the Gauteng Online project that was implemented by the Department of Basic Education in 2002. It is during this time, especially, that I realised the importance of extensive teacher training when it comes to the effective integration of ICT in schools.

I went on to work for iSchoolAfrica in 2010: in this current initiative, tablets are provided to previously disadvantaged schools across South Africa by the Department of Rural Development. The mobile labs of tablets have been brought into these previously disadvantaged schools to assist mostly with numeracy and literacy development during Early Childhood Development and Primary School Mathematics support. The teacher training is robust, of high quality and therefore the programme has been running ever since its conception.

ThinkAhead Education Solutions brought the possibility of mobile devices into the classroom and I was involved in teacher development, parent presentations and delivered various workshops at EdTech conferences.

I worked as Director of Education at Onsite Education and I conducted teacher training on a daily basis for various teachers across a variety of schools across South Africa. I worked around the integration of curriculum and technology also looking at innovative pedagogical approaches to ensure the teachers teach a generation who will be seeking employment in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. I regularly engaged teachers and learners with in-curriculum robotics programmes as well as creating STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths) tasks for specific grades. I have been instrumental in the planning and running of the SA Mint project at Olievenhoutbosch Secondary School in Midrand. This project aims to skill thirty Grade 9 learners in basic computer skills and then coding and robotics over the next three years.

As part of the Onsite offering, I have developed a Computational Thinking Curriculum aimed at Grade 1 – 3 learners to instill a strong problem solving mindset, linking it explicitly to pattern recognition, algorithm design, analising data and decomposing problems into smaller parts. This curriculum is delivered in the form of online teacher guides which empowers teachers to teach towards skilling learners to becoming future-ready.

I am currently Head of Educational Technology at Redhill School. I teach Grade 6 & 7 Design and Technology and I am in charge of teacher professional development initiatives. We moved from Google Workplace to Office 365 integration this year and I was instrumental in getting our staff to innovate using Microsoft applications.

I have extensive experience and I am passionate about real change in our schools to ensure the employability of our learners and to make sure that they benefit from this changing world which includes technology as a way to employment.

#TeensinAI Global Hackathon 2020 & 2022

In partnership with the global organisation TeensinAI (https://www.teensinai.com/) I organised two hackathons, one in 2020 (just before COVID lockdown and the second one in 2022). A group of teens gathered to solve real-world challenges (using the UN Sustainable Development Goals) using cutting edge technology.

#Hack4Health (AfikaGeekGirls) (04/2017 – Present)
In collaboration with AfrikaGeekGirls, Standard Bank and Kingsmead
College, I organised a hackathon for girls from underserved schools
to create a solution for the booking system at our government
hospitals.

Apple Professional Learning Specialist
(11/2018 – Present)
Apple certifies a few educational specialists to run technology
integration in schools. This qualifies a specialist to roll-out OS/iOS
projects in schools and provides access to professional development
resources created by Apple.

ISTE Computational Thinking course
(03/2019)
I am in the process of attaining this certificate aimed at the
integration of Computational Thinking into all curriculum areas and
across grades. Link - and learning

EdTech Tribe ZA

Started a Facebook group for to form a community of teachers that can collaborate and share ideas.
(04/2018 – Present)
The EdTech Tribe ZA was started by myself and Gillian Gouws to
stimulate conversation and share community of best practice