Date: 21/03/2005
Source: Free State Provincial Government
Title: Tsopo: e-Education and IRRISS Conference
Address by the honourable MEC for Education, Free State Provincial Government, Mrs MA Tsopo at the e-Education and IRRISS Conference, Seventh Day, Adventist Church, Fairview Avenue
21 March 2005
Programme Director
Acting Superintendent-General, Mr Khunyeli
Senior Managers
Director of e-Education and IRRISS, Ms Kitching
Role Players interested in ICT and Information Services
Publishers and Suppliers
Educators
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is an honour for me to deliver an address at this conference where critical issues relating to information and communication technology (ICT) are under discussion. Technology has created dramatic changes in the way people communicate, learn, do business and solve problems. An information society is not about people using ICT. It is about the people who address common social and economic problems using ICT. It involves more than technical solutions and it also requires strong directives and leadership from Government. The provision of a telecommunication infrastructure available for learning and teaching is on the increase and many schools are exploiting the benefits of ICTs to enhance the quality of teaching and learning.
Programme Director, today I would like us to focus on libraries, and the role that libraries play in the curriculum. It is our belief as the Free State Department of Education that for schools to be centres of quality education and learning, they need to be resourced with information. It is therefore vital that each and every school in the province and in the country should have a library of its own. That is a mammoth task that Government is taking head-on.
R22 million has been transferred to 50 previously disadvantaged schools - 25 primary schools and 25 secondary schools. This money is to enable these schools to establish their own functioning libraries. This is an effort by the Department to assist the schools to ensure that learners are exposed to rich information resource and to support curriculum delivery.
This process will be ongoing and other previously disadvantaged schools will be identified and provided with libraries each year provided until we have covered all schools in the Free State Province.
Once our schools have been resourced, we need commitment from everyone involved to manage these resources. The situation at our schools has been chaotic in the past, and still is, with regard to management of resources.
Ladies and gentlemen, we need to realise that Government cannot afford to keep on spending millions on resources that are destroyed by those who are supposed to benefit from them. In this manner the goals of the curriculum will never be achieved and service delivery will also be slow as Government will keep on spending money to replace resources and equipment that was there before but had been stolen or vandalised by our communities.
The Department is hard at work with the implementation of e-Education at schools. Programme Director, the concept of e-Education revolves around the use of ICTs to accelerate the achievement of national education goals. e-Education is about connecting learners and teachers to each other and to professional support services, and providing platforms for learning. We need to move to a vision of developing different information communities in South Africa, of expanding and connecting them to make a bigger and more effective learning society.
For our educators it is not business as usual. The introduction of ICT into the learning process will fundamentally change the role of educators and the way schools are run and administrated. Teachers will increasingly play the role of guiding learners in self-learning, data sourcing and analysis and other computer-based learning projects.
Consideration has been given to the development of courses that will prepare teachers for the new learning areas of Curriculum 2005. Since the implementation of e-Education in 2004, many educators have already received training. We also need to ensure that the new teachers entering the profession have an understanding of how to use ICT in their teaching.
We are targeting all schools countrywide to be transformed into e-Schools by 2013, and all learners to be computer literate by this date. Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to inform you that the Free State Department of Education (FSDoE) is engaging ten schools in a pilot project where joint websites, e-journals and students
Source: Free State Provincial Government
Title: Tsopo: e-Education and IRRISS Conference
Address by the honourable MEC for Education, Free State Provincial Government, Mrs MA Tsopo at the e-Education and IRRISS Conference, Seventh Day, Adventist Church, Fairview Avenue
21 March 2005
Programme Director
Acting Superintendent-General, Mr Khunyeli
Senior Managers
Director of e-Education and IRRISS, Ms Kitching
Role Players interested in ICT and Information Services
Publishers and Suppliers
Educators
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is an honour for me to deliver an address at this conference where critical issues relating to information and communication technology (ICT) are under discussion. Technology has created dramatic changes in the way people communicate, learn, do business and solve problems. An information society is not about people using ICT. It is about the people who address common social and economic problems using ICT. It involves more than technical solutions and it also requires strong directives and leadership from Government. The provision of a telecommunication infrastructure available for learning and teaching is on the increase and many schools are exploiting the benefits of ICTs to enhance the quality of teaching and learning.
Programme Director, today I would like us to focus on libraries, and the role that libraries play in the curriculum. It is our belief as the Free State Department of Education that for schools to be centres of quality education and learning, they need to be resourced with information. It is therefore vital that each and every school in the province and in the country should have a library of its own. That is a mammoth task that Government is taking head-on.
R22 million has been transferred to 50 previously disadvantaged schools - 25 primary schools and 25 secondary schools. This money is to enable these schools to establish their own functioning libraries. This is an effort by the Department to assist the schools to ensure that learners are exposed to rich information resource and to support curriculum delivery.
This process will be ongoing and other previously disadvantaged schools will be identified and provided with libraries each year provided until we have covered all schools in the Free State Province.
Once our schools have been resourced, we need commitment from everyone involved to manage these resources. The situation at our schools has been chaotic in the past, and still is, with regard to management of resources.
Ladies and gentlemen, we need to realise that Government cannot afford to keep on spending millions on resources that are destroyed by those who are supposed to benefit from them. In this manner the goals of the curriculum will never be achieved and service delivery will also be slow as Government will keep on spending money to replace resources and equipment that was there before but had been stolen or vandalised by our communities.
The Department is hard at work with the implementation of e-Education at schools. Programme Director, the concept of e-Education revolves around the use of ICTs to accelerate the achievement of national education goals. e-Education is about connecting learners and teachers to each other and to professional support services, and providing platforms for learning. We need to move to a vision of developing different information communities in South Africa, of expanding and connecting them to make a bigger and more effective learning society.
For our educators it is not business as usual. The introduction of ICT into the learning process will fundamentally change the role of educators and the way schools are run and administrated. Teachers will increasingly play the role of guiding learners in self-learning, data sourcing and analysis and other computer-based learning projects.
Consideration has been given to the development of courses that will prepare teachers for the new learning areas of Curriculum 2005. Since the implementation of e-Education in 2004, many educators have already received training. We also need to ensure that the new teachers entering the profession have an understanding of how to use ICT in their teaching.
We are targeting all schools countrywide to be transformed into e-Schools by 2013, and all learners to be computer literate by this date. Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to inform you that the Free State Department of Education (FSDoE) is engaging ten schools in a pilot project where joint websites, e-journals and students
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