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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.

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.

Two teachers from VG High School in Grahamstown, Dr Hanton and Mrs McConnachie, collaborated very closely with the VSA over the last year and have now driven a combined application to the Microsoft Innovative Teacher Awards.

VGHS joined awareNet last year and its learners have since then participated in a number of different and very exciting online and collaborative projects on awareNet including creative writing and HipHop song competitions.

The recent project included music and science sub-projects and has lead to learner presentations at SciFest and peer teaching between VGHS and CM Vellem Higher Primary School. awareNet usage was integrated into co-curricular and mainstream teaching, facilitated by school teachers as well as the VSA.

We are very happy about this fantastic collaboration and quite confident that our project will be outstanding enough to bring the proposal into the second round of the Teacher Awards during which teachers have to present their projects personally in Durban. Watch this space for further developments.

Come and see us at SciFest 2012! This year, the VSA is for the first time a contributor and proudly presents awareNet.

We not only have computers there, on which we show awareNet content and explain the functionality of awareNet. You can also chat to all sorts of different awareNet users: learners from the various schools in Grahamstown, teachers and community coordinators and obviously, the VSA staff and the developers of awareNet (eKhaya ICT).

Interested visitors can create user accounts and start using awareNet straight away: We have created new projects that can be joined, e.g. “The SciFest Experience” Project. We also collect photographs with the theme “The African Century: ICTs Inspiring Innovation”. The best ones will be submitted to the eLearning Africa Conference Photo Competition.

Learners from VGHS present their SciFest Projects on awareNet to learners from different schools in the Eastern Cape

SciFest takes place in Grahamstown, more precisely in the Monument, from 14.-20.3.12. You will find us on the 1st floor. Free Entry.

The VSA will present awareNet and it’s content during this year’s SciFest in Grahamstown, South Africa, 14.-20.3.2012. The theme of the SciFest is “Science rocks!”, so we chose the title “Rocks and Music in Social Networking” for our exhibition.

The VSA and the learners themselves, i.e. awareNet users from Grahamstown, will present their projects about all kind of rocks and of course music during the Science Festival. All projects will be previously created collaboratively on awareNet and continued during SciFest. awareNet users will interview other SciFest presenters and speakers, and Festival visitors will be able to watch the videos and submit their comments.

Festival visitors can join awareNet for free, explore it’s multimedia content and add their comments! They can create their own personal website, access learner made content about rock science and music and connect with the awareNet community. There will be a space to discuss and rate what they have seen. They can also record their own interviews about their experience at SciFest which will be uploaded onto awareNet for other users. Once registered on awareNet they can access it from where ever they want in the world and stay connected with our community.
We want to show that

• Computer literacy and understanding the Internet is important for understanding science and accessing information about science.
• Science and the Internet are both a collaborative effort.
• Everyone can be part of science and take part in collaborative projects.