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Goosen E

E-learning hard for SA to implement, but necessary: iLIVE - Times LIVE - 1 views

  • Most South African learners in rural and township areas do not have access to the Internet.
  • they will be entering a world where proficiency with digital technology is a fundamental necessity. 
  • when these learners leave school,
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  • because of the myriad obstacles to widespread digital access in South Africa, some educators and experts in the technological field argue that e-learning is not viable for us. They believe that bridging the digital divide is too big a challenge.
  • in developed countries
  • technology allows them to engage more deeply with the subject matter, while – crucially, in today’s technology driven world – also allowing them to become comfortable with using digital technology.
  • Implementing e-learning programmes in South Africa is difficult.
  • that implemented properly, e-learning can assist in both equipping learners to enter a digital world, and alleviating what many see as a crisis in our education system.
  • proper implementation” lies in using educational technologies that span the online and offline worlds.
  • solutions
  • using educational technologies that span the online and offline worlds
  • Via Afrika
  • developing digital learning tools that require only limited Internet connectivity to work, and can be used both online and offline.
  • LivingPages app for Grade 10, 11 and 12 textbooks
  • interact with their textbooks using a smartphone or tablet
  • it enhances the printed page with extra digital content
  • can be streamed directly through the smartphone.
  • video
  • graphics
  • audio
  • Another
  • example
  • the Via Afrika eBook series for Grades 4–12.
  • e-textbooks can be read in the MobiReader app
  • allows for learners to engage with digital enhancements such as videos, slide shows and audio offline
  • Government is also making inroads into overcoming barriers to e-learning
  • Gauteng
  • its intention to introduce e-learning to the province’s schools, and distribute 88 000 tablets to schools that need them.
  • 2014-03-05
  • broadband technology is also becoming increasingly accessible
  • Too often underprivileged learners who gain entry into tertiary institutions find themselves poorly equipped to work with the technology needed to succeed in these institutions.
  • If given the opportunity to engage with digital technologies from a young age, learners won’t have to face such challenges later on.
  • will only increase as cheaper smartphones and internet access become available.
  • creative educational solutions
Goosen E

Good Work Foundation | 5 Great Learning Apps for Rural South Africa - 1 views

  • 5 Great Learning Apps for Rural South Africa Back
  • Apple claims that 80,000 of its apps are catergorised as “education.”
  • in July 2014 there were over three million apps available
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  • one of the digital facilitator’s most important tasks is “app aggregation” – and that depends on age, academic level, language ability, etc.
  • Below are five apps that our digital facilitators used in 2014 at Hazyview Digital Learning Centre’s (HDLC) Open Learning Academy in rural South Africa for grade four learners.
  • The focus
  • is to “have as much fun as possible” but coming in a close second: dramatically improve English reading and comprehension, and basic mathematics numeracy
  • easiest for beginners to use, and the most useful in terms of content for our group of learners.
  • Scrabble (Electronic Arts)
  • Word Search (MichelAnge Workshop)
  • Math BINGO (Iuyen sg)
  • Sentence Builder Lite (BareBoneApps.com)
  • Open Learning Academies are built to empower rural people from a young age. The academies aim to deliver English literacy, math’s literacy, digital literacy, and life skills to school-aged learners.
Goosen E

Author Mark Bauerlein Says Tools of the Digital Age Distract Young People From Reading ... - 5 views

  • people age 18-34 are consistently less knowledgeable about current events than their elders.
  • The survey found that the knowledge gap was widest on foreign affairs.
  • Bauerlein says young people are in the thrall of Facebook, texting and other digital distractions that keep them from learning about anything more meaningful than, say, who went with whom to the school dance.
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  • "What do 15-year-olds care about? They care about what all the other 15-year-olds are doing," Bauerlein says. "Anything that puts them in touch with one another they're going to use."
  • he says the digital age has changed something fundamental about the family structure, and the result is that young people are less closely under the guidance of adults than ever before.
  • Left unchecked, these developments could result in a new age dark of ignorance, Bauerlein warns, or as a blurb for his book puts it, "Sacrificing our future to the least curious and intellectual generation in national history."
  • "I give speeches to 18-year-old boys who don't read the paper and I say, 'You're in college and just met the girl of your dreams. She takes you home to meet her parents. Over the dinner table her father says something about Ronald Reagan, and you don't know who he was. Guess what? You just went down in their estimation and probably in your girlfriend's estimation as well. Is that what you want?'"
  • Bauerlein tells students that "reading the paper gives you more breadth of knowledge.
Goosen E

Media Alert: Free high-speed internet at all Western Cape schools by end-2016 | Western... - 1 views

  • 8 September 2015
  • Premier Helen Zille formally launched the Western Cape’s eLearning “Game-Changer” at the province’s Legislature building in Cape Town today (8 September 2015).
  • will provide free high-speed internet access to all Western Cape schools by the end of 2016, to support teaching and learning.
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  • for improving access to quality education in all communities.
  • vision is to use eLearning to improve literacy and numeracy, and to ensure that our learners are better prepared for the 21st century.
  • two key parts.
  • free high-speed broadband access.
  • first
  • second
  • give learners and teachers instant access to the very best digital materials for teaching and learning.
  • ePortal
  • Western Cape Government (WCG) is investing R3.8 billion over the next 10 years to bring high-speed broadband to all residents of the Western Cape.
  • And schools are our first priority. Over the next decade, R2 billion of the total investment will be on connectivity at schools.
  • broadband system will provide a Wide Area Network (WAN).
  • total of 581km of fibre optic cable will have been laid by the end of 2016,
  • alongside the existing 1251km Neotel cable network
  • backbone
  • connects all schools and other sites across the province.
  • Western Cape Education Department is also installing Local Area Networks (LANs) in schools, district offices and head offices to connect classrooms, teachers and learners to the broader admin system.
  • Work started in September last year, and the first schools were connected to the WAN in April this year
  • 31 August 2015, service providers have completed connectivity at 275 schools
  • end of 2016, all schools in the province will have free, high-speed internet access.
  • “smart classrooms”
  • including interactive whiteboards, laptops, projectors and other devices to support teaching and learning.
  • addition
  • will be able to use their own devices,
  • 3 350 smart classrooms were established in schools in 2014/15. The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) also refreshed 249 computer laboratories in the same year.
  • The WCED has provided 26 000 ICT training opportunities to date, to support teaching and learning.
  • the new eLearning Portal has gone live, and is accessible at www.wcedeportal.co.za.
  • Our new broadband system and the digital revolution are making it much easier to respond to the individual needs of learners, teachers, parents, school managers and governors.
  • individuals can easily access the ePortal from any location
  • content available on the ePortal will be entirely demand-driven, with content suppliers competing to provide the best digital resources.
Goosen E

The Challenges of Closing the Digital Divide - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Q: What do we know about the people who aren’t able to obtain access to or afford broadband?
  • South Carolina
  • challenges of closing the digital divide.
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  • millions of people are caught in the divide
  • many are low-income and in rural areas
Goosen E

The challenge of bridging the digital divide - 0 views

  • 13–19 August 2016,
  • 9 September 2016, 13:05
Goosen E

Project Isizwe | Company Profile | Business Review Africa - 0 views

  • Super Admin - Aug 23, 2016
  • Deloitte research has shown that productivity in developing countries could be enhanced by as much as 25 percent with the expansion of WiFi access.
  • 75 percent of citizens can’t easily or affordably get online
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  • Project Isizwe, a not-for-profit organisation based in the city of Tshwane, is currently working with government bodies across South Africa to bring free public WiFi to the country. 
  • “We all understand the value of Internet connectivity,” Zahir Khan, the CEO of Project Isizwe, explains, “especially in terms of educational benefits, improved healthcare services, better opportunities for economic development — and, of course, social cohesion. From that perspective it’s critical to connect the country sooner rather than later.”
  • In 2013, a bid to connect every citizen was launched across the city of Tshwane. To date, it is Project Isizwe’s largest deployment effort, with 850 Free Internet Zones (FIZs) installed in the local area and almost two million unique users accessing the web since November of 2013. By 2018, Tshwane will have WiFi within walking distance of every citizen. 
  • installation of 213 Internet access points outside of schools in Tshwane.
  • This ensures that every learner, educator and community member in and around the schools is connected”.
  • Rural environments in South Africa also stand to benefit from the efforts of Project Isizwe,
  • these locations is admittedly more of a challenge
  • remote regions, state revenue is limited, thus it is more difficult to get these communities online.
  • “Funding has been the biggest barrier for expansion across the entire country,” Khan says.
  • Project Isizwe’s not-for-profit status
  • the project operates exclusively under cost-recovery: it doesn’t charge users for its service and the large-scale financial benefits of WiFi access for South Africa will not be immediately evident.
  • Research by the World Bank has shown that a 10 percent increase in what is called ‘broadband penetration’, the amount of the Internet access market that has been captured by high-speed broadband, will result in a 1.3 percent increase in a country’s GDP. 
  • access to an affordable mobile device
  • was also a barrier to Internet access in South Africa
  • cost of these items has fallen
  • Project Isizwe has deployed in rural environments, places as remote as the mountain village of Tshedza in Limpopo province
  • are finding creative ways to reach out into their newly-connected world.
  • Khan cites the story of Martin Nyokolodi, a young man in Tshwane who has launched his own Internet radio station, among his favourites. Not only does Nyokolodi utilise the City’s ‘TshWi-Fi’ service to broadcast his programme, he also takes Skype calls from listeners and maintains the station’s social media presence on the network.
  • Restaurant owners in proximity to a WiFi hotspot have been setting up shelters within signal range so that customers can access the web
  • these makeshift ‘Internet cafes’ have increased restaurant profits by as much as 80 percent
  • Internet has helped to streamline the process of care and diagnosis in South Africa’s clinics and medical facilities.
  • In its National Development Plan 2030, the government of South Africa states that it wants universally available Internet across the country in 14 years’ time. 
  • “The public hotspots become a place to bridge the digital divide, where regardless of personal circumstance or background, everyone has access to the same Internet,” Khan says.  
Goosen E

The Future of Education: BYOD in the Classroom | WIRED - 2 views

  • students bring and use their choice of technologically assistive devices in the classroom
  • No parent I know would argue for unrestricted, unmonitored online access for kids of any age
  • And these concerns are valid
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  • Distractions of games and videos Unmonitored social networking leading to bullying or predation Consumption (and creation) of inappropriate content Social status and stigma of devices
  • Personal computing changed the nature of human life forever
  • The impact of these devices on the lives of adults and children of today is amazing but it is only the beginning
  • a wave of innovation in digital assistive devices
  • devices like Google Glass
  • people are never without their smartphone and rarely out of range of a network connection.
  • human condition is radically improved by the immediacy of information and social interconnectedness that these devices enable
  • smartphone has become a seamless compliment to my human brain. With my brain and my smartphone on, I am more powerful
  • addictive
  • We are all more powerful beings armed with our devices
  • Whose responsibility is it to teach responsible use?
  • important to teach children how to use their other technology “brains” as it is to teach them to use their physical brains
  • So how are teachers and administrators to cope with the risks of unfettered online access with the responsibility to teach students how to leverage this irreplaceable technology?
  • Seek tools to manage content
  • Put policy and technology in place
  • Surround the access points with security
  • Leverage the speed of these new technologies to discover and participate in experiments with pioneering institutions in the digital world.
  • how are parents to cope with the risks of unfettered online access at school
  • supporting your local school in their efforts with BYOD and technology initiatives
  • Associating technology with learning in the minds of our children
  • These are not JUST tools for playing games.
  • both physical books and ebooks
  • read to your children
  • sources of interaction like ebooks
  • devices can be used for knowledge consumption and knowledge contribution
  • Show them how you manage your work life and home life with the help of your own devices
  • etiquette for email and SMS in the same way that you discuss the polite ways to interact personally
Goosen E

Lessons in cybersecurity launched for schoolchildren - Telegraph - 0 views

  • will include case studies of international cybercrime attacks and lessons on cryptography and malware.
  • leading industry experts have called for cybersecurity to be made a part of the curriculum.
  • knowing how to operate in the digital environment and understanding the pitfalls of the Internet were “fundamental to the way we live”.
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