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In association with the British Council and the Department of Basic Education, we are running an awarenet project at VG High School to generate language learning materials for rural and disadvantaged schools in South Africa.

A LifePlayer is a portable, wind up and solar powered radio and MP3 player, designed for use in underdeveloped countries and situations where access to information and infrastructure such as electricity is often lacking. The LifePlayer allows people to access information from around the world through radio broadcasts. The British Council has sponsored the donation of 900 LifePlayers to rural schools in South Africa, where access to learning resources and particularly electrical appliances and the internet is very limited if available at all.

The British Council LifePlayers have a number of English language learning resources pre-loaded on them. However, this content has been made in the United Kingdom and is not directed at either a South African audience or the South African additional language curriculum.

Learners at VGHS have prepared set texts from the intermediate phase additional language curricula and these have been recorded as short podcasts, which can be distributed with the LifePlayers around South Africa. awarenet learners under the supersivion of Dr Sarah Hanton have had to learn about how to use their voices to tell a story, how to make their own sound effects and how to perform for radio broadcast.

The project is currently presented at SciFest 2013 in Grahamstown. You can find us in the monument, 3rd floor. Here is a little sneak preview of what you can expect: Frog and Crow get the Wrong Message. Have a listen, we think, it’s amazing!

We proudly announce that awarenet will be presented to the public at SciFest for the second time. The Science Festival in Grahamstown starts today and is ends next week on the 19/03/13 – plenty of time to have a look at the learning network, to login and explore the features and content.

You will also have the opportunity to chat to our regular awarenet users, learners and teachers from various schools in Grahamstown as well as to our awarenet coordinators and the volunteers, who work together with the learners on various awarenet projects.

This year, we additionally present a very special project: In association with the British Council and the Department of Basic Education, we are running an awarenet project at VGHS to generate language learning materials for rural and disadvantaged schools in South Africa, using the Life Player.

The Life Players have a number of English language learning resources pre-loaded on them. However, this content has been made in the United Kingdom and is not directed at either a South African audience or the South African additional language curriculum.

Learners at VGHS have prepared set texts from the intermediate phase additional language curricula and these have been recorded as short pod casts, which can be distributed with the Life Players around South Africa. The awarenet groups have had to learn about how to use their voices to tell a story, how to make their own sound effects and how to perform for radio broadcast.

Visit us at the SciFest to learn more about the project, the collaboration and the Life Player.

The awarenet Peace Song Collection CD is out and distributed to all the participants of the project. The VSA organised a launch party to celebrate the event appropriately and thank everyone wholeheartedly who was involved in the awarenet theme song project.

Terri-Lynn Penney organised the event (Fr, 1/2/13 at Nombulelo SS hall) and invited awarenet users, teachers, other NGOs in Grahamstown and the press.The crowd was excited, music was played and everyone danced and mingled. During the ceremony, a speech was given by Terri-Lynn Penney. She also played the songs and showed the music video by Mary Waters HS. Then, CDs were given out to all involved in the project.

Learners from VG High School with their copy of the CD. Copyright: Stephen Penney, Grocott’s Mail

During the course of the project, an independent HipHop group formed at Nyaluza PSS called Teen Legacy. They were also given the chance to perform for everyone and showed off what they had learned since then, followed by Inyaniso, the senior HipHop band that taught the awarenet learners last year how to perform and rap. Everything was very exciting, the launch a great success!

The project will be repeated this year, starting after the Arts Festival in July to bring learners on stage and perform on Peace Day, 21/09/13. Contact us if you would like to participate with your friends or your learners!

The VSA has received a generous donation by an overseas member to produce another 100 awarenet Peace Song Collection CDs. This means that every participant in the awarenet Peace Song Project will receive their own copy, and the rest can be used for advertising our programme and hopefully to attract more funding to repeat the project next year.

We are planning to hand out the CDs during an official release party for awarenet users and partners. The party will probably take place at the beginning of the next school year in one of the halls in Joza. We will inform you once we know more and you are welcome to contact us if you would like to be invited. In the mean time we would like to thank the donor whole hardheartedly!

During this year’s Arts Festival, awareNet users and Festinos had the chance to try out awareNet’s new scribbling tool for the first time. This scribbling tool makes awareNet even more creative and interactive. The young guests at our stand in the ASSITEJ Family Venue had a lot of fun:

We hope to see much more of this on awareNet once term has started again. Thank you again, Bea, for the idea and the co-operation.

Festinos also wrote a lot of blogs about the shows they have watched at the ASSITEJ FAmily Venue, and we gave out 8 daily prizes for the best blog. Here is an extract of one of them about The Eco-Woolf and the 3 Little Pigs:

“The show was soooo cool and funny!!:)
The show told people that you must recycle to make the earth eco- friendly but if you don’t the earth will be harmed.
If you recycle your friends will recycle and that will be very good.
YOU MUST RECYCLE!” (Jess – She won a voucher sponsored by the Spur.)

If you are interested to also use awareNet, contact us, simply send a comment to this blog.

This year at the Arts Festival, The VSA partners with ASSITEJ South Africa, a networking platform for people working with or interested in theatre for children and young people. The organisation makes a significant mark on the festival, bringing 10 high quality productions, workshops and other exciting activities to the festival.

With some shows already sold-out, families visiting the ASSITEJ Family Venue will enjoy stimulating, enriching and diverse theatre experiences from some of the most esteemed theatre-makers for young audiences, including Nicholas Ellenbogen, Jori Snell, Rob Murray, and Lynne Joffe. The venue, Oatlands Preparatory, is conveniently situated on African Street, with additional access from Luke Street, and just up Douglas Lane from the Fiddler’s Hub.

The VSA will be present at the ASSITEJ Family Venue with its mobile awareNet lab (in the coffee shop next to the show hall) to allow visitors to leave their opinions and feedback in a sociable, collaborative and child-friendly space. Show visitors will, for example, have the opportunity to blog about the show they have watched and win one of our daily prizes for the best blog. All blogs will be accumulated into a Festival Bulletin Project.

Further the VSA will be unveiling a new social creativity booster on awareNet to enhance the children’s art experience at the venue. Development of the new Scribble-App was inspired by playDUcation. Users can upload pictures and work on them in an artistic and free manner, then save the new picture and add it to the projects. To get an idea of how that will look like, please have a look at Bea Beste’s webpage.

Visitors of the family venue can access the platform from their mobile devices (free via WiFi) or provided laptops. Festival runs from Thursday 28/6/12 – 6/7/12.

At this year’s SciFest, the VSA presented awareNet to the public, mostly to learners, teachers and other visitors who were interested in education and science. The audience was excited and very inspired. Visitors got to try out awareNet on site and were able to upload their photos and videos, blog their experiences at SciFest and chat to one another. Our stand was all the time pretty busy! So, we were interviewed several times by newspapers, the radio and also BayTV. Watch for yourself!

BayTV provides quality viewing entertainment to all facets of demographics residing in and around the Bay area. It can be found on the UHF bandwidth at 735.25 MHz,bBy using a terrestrial aerial.

It pays off to be an awareNet user. Apart from working on exciting projects together with learners from various different schools, you often have the possibility to be rewarded with things like free theater visits, restaurant outings, scientific tours or – in this case – free tickets to the Eastern Cape Schools Festival 2012 in Grahamstown.

The Grahamstown Foundation is a continuous partner of the Village Scribe Association and has offered us for the 3rd time in a row free tickets for our learners. This year, 13 grade 11 learners from Mary Waters HS will participate together with Mrs Funeka Jacobs, our awareNet coordinator at that school. Last year, the learners came from Benjamin Mahlasela SS, Nathaniel Nyaluza PSS and Ntsika SS. Again, the learners will document what they have learned during the Festival and then write a bulletin on awareNet. Have a look at the EC Schools Fest Bulletin from last year and look out for this year’s bulletin. We will inform you once it’s out.

Everyone is very excited and would like to thank the Grahamstown Foundation for their community work!