The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) will be thinking out of the box and breaking the computer lab ICT education mould in a rural pilot. The pilot will take place at Cofimvaba, Eastern Cape, South Africa. awareNet is forms an important part of the social networking technology and methodology for the project. The CSIR is one of the leading scientific and technology research, development and implementation organisations in Africa, which undertakes directed research and development for socio-economic growth.
The Village Scribe Association will be help with the training of the community awareNet champions, who will be taking the learners at the school through the programme. Learning about awareNet is never the aim of the programme, it is just an enabler for the learners to be able to collaboratively work on agriculture projects that directly affect their community. The CSIR’s other partners will ensure that useful and valuable content is introduced into the network.
The experience and product management information supplied by the VSA to implementing partner eKhaya ICT has been instrumental in this success for the Grahamstown team. The system is clearly ripe enough and stable enough to provide all the functionality required by the CSIR to meet their needs. More information about the technology aspects of this awareNet pilot can be found on the eKhaya ICT blog.
Further, the work done by the VSA with Grahamstown school learners and teachers is a valuable example for future trainers. As such, training sessions for small groups of awareNet champions can take place inthis living laboratory and provide valuable experience for future trainers.