Riaan Van der Bergh
Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools (FEDSAS) - Deputy CEO and EdTech Lead
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Riaan serves as Deputy CEO of FEDSAS (Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools) and also leads the FEDSAS Centre for Technology and Centre for Finance and Risk Management. He has been with FEDSAS for 12 years and
has contributed to publications on School Governance and Teacher training. He is a regular speaker on Education technology as well as general education matters at conferences and in the media. He has served as the SAELA (South African Education Law Association) Treasurer for the past six years. Riaan has contributed to various publications like Financial
Management in Public Schools, Help, I’m a student teacher and Excellent Education and translated AI is here - are you ready into Afrikaans. He holds a post graduate degree in accounting and completed accounting articles with KPMG. Riaan is passionate about education and has devoted the past 14 years to research and consultation and advise on the sensible use of the tools of our time to better learning outcomes. He is married to Elsabe and has two children aged 16 and 15 and also serves on
the governing body of his kids’ school.
Digital divide or digital bridge - Access in a diverse society (a South African challenge)
In a very diverse nation like South Africa (and many other countries) with poverty or wealth being one of the key indicators, leaders are often overwhelmed by the acute problems like access to devices, connectivity and data without seeing the possible solutions of the digital bridge in the tools of our time. We ask the leaders of our time to face the challenges with a solution based approach and not only list the 10 problems for every solution. Instead of banning, let's utilise for good. Instead of policy, let's create a playbook rather than rules, instead of policing let's drive practicing, and instead of tightening, let's do training. AI could be the printing press moment of our generation that could lead to the democratising of information, knowledge and learning. Not only can we reproduce information as in the book-era, it can also reproduce intelligence. The digital bridge to cross the digital divide is developing faster than education leaders are harnessing its possibilities.
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