Submitted by Megan Rademeyer of SchoolNet
Sunward Park High School in Boksburg, Gauteng recently launched their digital learning innovation. This event was reported on the DBE website at this URL: http://www.education.gov.za/Home/eLearning/tabid/855/Default.aspx 

Instead of textbooks, each learner accesses all of his or her textbooks as well as other teaching and learning resources on a tablet with access to the Train Your Brain e-portal. Through this portal and the school’s wifi-network learners have access to a range of content including Wikipedia, Learning Channel videos and workbooks, Khan Academy resources and Learnthings materials. Whilst other schools have embarked on pilot projects to test a tablet solution, at the launch event held on 19 March 2012, Sunward Park claimed to be the first government school in South Africa that has gone “100% e-books”.

The learners at Sunward Park High have completely embraced the tablet project and some learners confidently showed principals from other schools how they access content and interact with it as part of the launch event. Whilst the school is convinced that the savings on photocopying and textbooks have made the tablets an affordable alternative to books at Sunward Park High.

Megan Rademeyer from SchoolNet’s presentation at the launch event explained how the tablet solution offers teachers and learners far more than paper-based textbooks can. SchoolNet SA looks forward to running our ‘Journey with Tablets’ course with teachers from Sunward to show how as well as being used as e-readers, the tablets can also be used as a creation tool, a platform for sharing, a collaboration tool, a source of content and to access professional development.