South Africa: Schools benefit from computer literacy training

Highway Africa News Agency

The Internet Service Providers' Association of South Africa (ISPA) has begun a series of computer literacy training courses in the five provinces of South Africa. According to ISPA the Free State, Limpopo, North West, KwaZulu Natal and Mpumalanga are the targeted provinces for the training. Chairperson of ISPA's Teacher Training Working Group Bernie Amler explained that the latest round of skills training will boost the practical knowledge of 121 educators from 13 schools and represents one of ISPA's biggest investments in South Africa.

One of the main criteria of ISPA's nationwide teacher training programme is that schools need to be in dire need of IT skills training to enable them to benefit from the initiative. The educators will be trained on OpenOffice2 by SETA (Sector Education & Training Authority) accredited assessors from Avuxeni Computer Academy. "One of the greatest achievements of this programme is the 100 per cent attendance rate recorded at the training sessions over the years. The enthusiasm and general appreciation expressed by both learners and educators continually reinforces our commitment to them." Said Riaan van Brakel, Director of Avuxeni Computer Academy. The ongoing sponsorship from UniForum SA, the CO.ZA Registry, has had a profound impact on the schools previously trained as well as the wider community since the programme's inception in December 2001. The ongoing training will increase the number of educators trained to 1 256 and the number of computers donated by UniForum to 1 685 over the past few years.

The computer laboratories at which training is conducted were deployed by NetDay. "A major disadvantage faced by our school is the lack of teachers knowledgeable enough to help our learners keep abreast of new developments in technology. We are grateful to ISPA's teacher training programme for addressing this need," said D.H. Makappa, Principal of Lerato Uthando Secondary School in the Free State. Every annual iWeek conference features the "Super Teacher of the Year" awards, which recognize teachers that have participated in ISPA's teacher training project and successfully imparted their newly acquired knowledge to their learners and local communities.

Ten outstanding teachers will have the opportunity to participate in the awards and one phenomenal teacher will be selected from this group as the winner. ISPA conveys its special thanks to the following companies for their charitable contributions towards training over the years: Absa Bank, eNetworks, Snowball Effect, X-DSL Broadband, Imaginet, MTN Network Solutions, Cybersmart, Internet Solutions, Posix, SAI Futurenet and Intoweb Training for sponsoring software.