A valuable lesson in education
Boksburg high school starts digital revolution in classroom
IN an unassuming suburb of Boksburg, located just off the N17 to Springs in Gauteng, the most forward-thinking government school in South Africa shares something in common with some of its peers: it has no textbooks. However, this state of affairs is entirely by choice because Sunward Park High School has gone fully digital.
To date, three schools in South Africa have gone digital, two of them private primary schools. Sunward Park’s initiative took the Department of Education by surprise and its changeover business model is being analysed for three months by a departmental task team to provide a case study.
“The department is using this information to inform the e-learning strategy we are developing,” said Charles Phahlane, head of communications of the Gauteng department of education.
If this sounds a little like a vague scramble, it is because Sunward Park conducted all its own research and sought its own sponsors.
“Back in 2008 we had the idea to install smartboards for the science department. From there, teachers could motivate for the installation of a smartboard from the school’s discretionary budget. Today we have 42. Soon all 52 classrooms will have smartboards. The smartboard bundle includes the board, projector and a laptop for the teacher,” said deputy principal Enoch Thango.
In 2010, hotel and resort group Peermont wanted to sponsor school projects, and after evaluating about 100 candidates it sponsored seven.
“We got Macbooks and a science lab with iPads. We started using apps for teaching, but teachers had to book equipment and it wasn’t an ideal situation. We allocated them to student journalists during the Fifa World Cup and some of their video content was broadcast on DStv channels. We saw how keen they were and we knew we had to embrace more technology,” said Thango. The school has 1 225 pupils. “In June 2012 we had been looking at introducing tablets or iPads when we read an article featuring MIB Technology and some ICT solutions they’d been installing in rural KwaZulu-Natal. We liked what they
We filled the hall with parents three times over; only a few had concerns
were doing and invited them to present a proposal for the school,” said Thango. “They devised a solution that used tablets and a portal with resources loaded onto a server — a digital library including Learning Channel videos, web books and other digital learning content that would all be fed through a Wi-Fi hot spot covering the school.”
The digital library also stores past exam papers and marking memos, content from National Geographic, Wikipedia, TED Talks, material from the Massachusets Institute of Technology and further content from the Royal Society of Chemistry, and Mindset Learn is on the way.
“The school pays a R5 000-a-year licence fee. We first addressed the students about our intentions and then we asked all the parents to vote — which they did in an overwhelming majority — for the digital system. We filled the school hall with parents three times over and only a few had concerns. Till today, no students have been mugged and the four cases of theft in seven months are, by number, relatively low compared with the usual theft of cellphones,” said Thango.
Sunward Park negotiated aggressively with textbook publishers and benefited from early-mover advantage. “Macmillan was the first publishing house to agree to sending us content in digital format. They agreed to a substantial discount, but to fulfil the requirements of the Gauteng department of education catalogue we also had to source elsewhere. Pearson agreed to fill the holes and we managed to negotiate an affordable complete package. In fact, the publishers offered us a fouryear licence for each book, which means the price of each textbook is effectively 25% of what it was.”
Parents were spending R1 800 to R2 000 a year on textbooks, which has been brought down to a licence fee for each tablet of just R300 a year. “We had to agree to locking in the content on each tablet because the publishers were worried about copying, so the content is protected and cannot leave the device.”
Next the school had to make sure the tablets were affordable. “We came down to two options: a 7-inch display for around R1 000 or a 10-inch display for R2 000. Most parents went for the 10-inch device. MIB provided the entire solution, using a supplier in Midrand for the tablets. Some parents have opted to supply their own devices, in which case they pay only the R300 licence fee.”
The Wi-Fi server has the capacity for the large number of connections required as well as space for content and back-ups; it cost R60 000. The portal cost a further R30 000 and the Wi-Fi technology R250 000, and the school spent just less than R800 000 on e-books.
“There is obviously a challenge if the prescribed textbook changes while the licence is in place, but the publishers have agreed to let us either swap out the books we use or get credits on remaining licences. The R300 licence fees we collect go towards books, maintenance and recouping costs. We used two years’ allocation of our Gauteng education department budget to put the system in place, with special permission, and we reimburse the kitty as we go along. The department was supportive and we just had to apply to deviate from the usual allocations.”
Will pupils still learn how to write? “We have kept some traditional work forms— class work and homework are done in exercise books. But there are many advantages to going digital. We found a free learner-management system called Moodle for teachers to prepare and set up lessons. We’re busy training teachers in delivery using the system and creating question banks for tests. Marking is automatic in Moodle, and it helps greatly with going back to do revision work where students have clearly been struggling,” said Thango.
All content from Macmillan allows modification — such as highlighting, crossing out and making notes — and contains embedded content such as videos. Teachers can upload notes and materials to the server.
“The deputy minister of education was present at the launch and 100 principals came to see the system. Forty stated their interest immediately. We have hosted schools and we’ve been invited to conferences such as African Education Week to showcase our classroom system. We’ve been extremely busy, commanding a lot of attention and many schools are showing interest. It’s the first of its scale in a school so there have been some teething problems, but we’ve given ourselves a year. MIB had to modify their solution hundredfold to meet our requirements, so it’s also meant a growth path for them. We’re in the process of fine-tuning the system, and of course there are external issues like Telkom exchanges and cable theft to contend with.”