‘Paperless classrooms’ launched
Education is the only available weapon with which to fight the high unemployment rate and poverty confronting the country, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa told a large gathering at the launch of Gauteng provincial government’s ground-breaking e-learning programme at Boitumelong Secondary School in Tembisa, on the East Rand, today.
The R2-billion “paperless classrooms” project, as the initiative is called, pertains providing learners in public schools with free tablet computers that will be connected to the internet and loaded with digitally formatted schoolwork, notes, mathematical workbooks and diagrams, to name a few. The tablets will replace hard copy textbooks to enhance the effectiveness of learning and teaching.
Provision has been made for lost tablets, and each input is automatically transferred to a main frame monitored by Telkom.
“The one major factor constraining the growth of the country’s economy is the absence of enough skilled people, and education plays a critical role in the transference of required skills,” asserted Ramaphosa.
The Deputy President invoked an observation by former President Nelson Mandela when he said it was only through education that “the son and daughter of a peasant will be able to sit side by side with those from a rich parentage”.
Education provides you with a tool through which you can overcome all impediments that come your way, Ramaphosa said.
He commended Gauteng for taking the lead in switching to e-learning, which would ensure that learners become part of the global technological age.
“We cannot forever follow others. We must take the lead,” he said.
He said he hoped the whole country would soon be introduced to digital learning.
Among dignitaries attending the launch were Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga, Telecommunications and Postal Services Minister Siyabonga Cwele, Gauteng Premier David Makhura and Gauteng MEC for Education Panyaza Lesufi.
Also in attendance were education officials from national and provincial governments.
This is a pilot project introduced at seven selected schools in Gauteng.
Makhura said the province was moving towards a “technological shift”.
“What we’re seeing here today is only a start. Soon we will be taking our drive to hospitals, where again we will be replacing document files with e-filing,” he said.
Quoting slain American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, the Premier said: “I’ve seen the future. The future looks bright.”
His province would lead in the “revolutionisation” of not only learning, but in the way that it did business in general.
“We want to be the ICT leader of the continent. We want to be the technological hub of Africa,” he said.
In his opening remarks earlier, Lesufi said the government was conscious of the fact that, this being the pilot project, “there are likely to be problems here and there”.
“But we are prepared for that, and in the event that these occur, they will provide us with an opportunity to learn so that by the time we move on, we know exactly what to do.
“Education of an African child will never be the same again,” said Lesufi.