Teachers brought to the students via wireless broadband technology

17 November 2004 News

South Africa's education system is suffering from a growing shortage of teachers and it is becoming more difficult to reach and teach all the students. Ron Beyers, director of technology at St Albans College in Pretoria, saw how a lack of educational resources kept segments of the country's population from advancing socially and economically, and devised a way to bring the teachers to the students by means of a telelearning system via wireless broadband.

As a result, the 'Ulwazi E-Learning initiative' was formed with Motorola, the Departments of Education and Communication and Omega Digital Technologies, a supplier of electronic whiteboards (SMART Boards). The initiative consists of five schools in the Tshwane metropolitan area that are connected via Motorola's Canopy wireless broadband network.

Realtime video and audio feeds are sent to all five schools from an educator's classroom roughly 15 km away. All communication is fully interactive and conducted via personal computers in the classrooms: in realtime, the students see on their SMART Board what the teacher is doing on his whiteboard; if a student has a question, they go to the front of the classroom and speak into a microphone and write on the SMART Board in their classroom.

"It is the highly interactive virtual classroom in action and it really allows the teacher to reach a large number of students," said Beyers. "For many, this is the first real educational opportunity that they have had. Motorola's Canopy wireless network has worked perfectly. Dial up access does not have the throughput or capacity to make this goal a reality," said Beyers.

"It can be a blueprint to improve the educational system throughout Africa. There is so much to be done, and Motorola's Canopy platform can be a tremendous asset for the African continent's educational backlog," commented Ronnie Seeber, government relations manager for Motorola in South Africa.

For more information see www.ulwaziproject.co.za

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