For children to have any chance of improving their literacy, furthering their education and essentially advancing their place in this world, access to books and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is paramount. This is something that we, alongside leading African mobile communications company – Vodacom understand wholeheartedly.
With the aim of effectively bridging the gap between understanding and education in life science, physical sciences and mathematics, SmartLabs has successfully helped to launch the Vodacom Mobile Science Cart Project, which saw three schools in KZN – KwaNtabeni Comprehensive High School, Thabela High School and Rietvalei High School – each receive a mobile library and a science cart, which consists of a projector, microscope, kinevision, laptop, speakers and ICT programming, on the 6th of May.
This comes after Vodacom, together with SmartLabs, put in place a strategy to meet the demands surrounding schools’ ICT infrastructures that is sufficiently reliable, flexible, sustainable and cost-effective not only for today’s demands, but also to provide capacity for future growth and the ability to implement new technologies in a time frame that maximises the benefit to the schools.
Therefore the cart – planned to suit the CAPS syllabus, but also customisable to the needs of the school – will assist pupils to physically interact with science and implement the media they use every day to learn and access this aspect of the subject.
Furthermore, not only was each school kitted out with a cart and a mobile library, technical and software training was also provided to the teachers, so that they are equipped with sufficient knowledge and understanding on how to utilise the cart to achieve the best possible learning experience. In addition, we will also be offering an ongoing comprehensive support system with regard to both the equipment and the programming.
SmartLabs is proud to be a part of this project, as part of our ongoing commitment to improving education for all students in sub-Saharan Africa. We look forward to actively reaching more schools and providing ICT solutions.