On this day, prizes worth R35 000 were up for grabs and varied from Tablet devices to iPad covers.
The keynote speaker was the head of Mustek e-learning initiatives, Kobus van Wyk, who delivered a speech on removing the barriers to IT assisted education.
According to the school’s deputy principal, Enoch Thango, the aim of the ‘e’ndaba was to showcase what Sunward has achieved so far.
“We want to form collaborations and partnerships with all interested parties, including schools and other parties,” said Thango.
The ‘e’ndaba also helped the School Governing Body to shape the direction which the school has to take in the next three to five years regarding digital platform education.
Thango said the ‘e’ndaba coincided with the SGB’s strategic planning sessions and persuading the Department of Basic Education to seriously study the school’s model to see if it cannot be implemented across all South African schools.
The ‘e’ndaba was made up of breakaway sessions during which workshops were presented and exhibitors had the opportunity to introduce their product/s or service/s.
“With the breakaway sessions we intended to showcase what our teachers are doing in their classes daily, and promote our partners – old and new – by showing the participants’ current and future technologies,” says Thango.
“The future of e-learning at Sunward looks very bright and augurs well with its quest of producing learners with twenty-first century skills that can compete globally.
“We hope the technology will enhance the quality of our results as we are already doing well in terms of pass rates. We want more than 90 per cent of our matriculants to achieve degree passes.”
The school’s prospects for improvement, thus, are not stagnant.
After hosting the first ‘e’ndaba, Thango says that Sunward would like to achieve the following:
* Current electronic PDF’s being replaced with electronic publications which will allow the teachers to take control of their e-books and making it easier to add own notes and videos on the e-book. As the learners walk into the school the following day, their e-books automatically update. Summary notes will be produced just by the click of a button.
* Sourcing a classroom management system which will enable a teacher to have full control of all the tablets in class so that all learners can focus on the lesson at hand.
* Allowing parents and learners access to view and print marks, reports, financial statements, merits and demerits and timetable.
* Developing their own electronic lessons (videos) and android apps.
* Getting more schools to join them in order to share their expertise with each other.
After the positive outcome of the first ‘e’ndaba, Sunward Park wants this to become an annual event with different schools in their pool hosting it each year.
