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Polity
Published: 30 Jul 2003
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| Asmal: Progress on rollout of Microsoft software donation (30/07/2003) | |
| Date: 30/07/2003 Source: Ministry of Education Title: Asmal: Progress on rollout of Microsoft software donation SPEECH BY THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION, PROFESSOR KADER ASMAL, MP, AT THE FUNCTION TO REPORT ON PROGRESS ON THE ROLLOUT OF THE MICROSOFT SOFTWARE DONATION, Banareng Primary School, Atteridgeville, Pretoria, 30 July 2003 Director of Ceremonies Your Excellency, Ambassador Keiichi Matsui Managing Director of Microsoft South Africa, Mr Gordon Fraser Representatives of the Tshwane Municipality Principal of Banareng Primary School, Ms Sethole Invited guests Ladies and gentlemen It gives me great pleasure to address you on this important occasion where we report on progress made thus far in the rollout of the Microsoft software donation to our schools. We are here to celebrate one of the most significant public-private partnerships since the dawn of democracy in our country. We are meeting at an extraordinary school, led by an extraordinary woman. A few years ago, Banareng Primary School was a failing school plagued by vandalism, non-involvement of parents, flight of students to other schools, and a lack of commitment by many teachers. Under the leadership of Ms Paulina Sethole, the school has been turned around. It is now one of the most attractive schools in this community, having increased its enrolment from 430 to 737 in just four years. The school has won twelve awards within a space of three years since 1999. In the spirit of Letsema and Vuk'uzenzele, the school started vegetable gardens to prevent hunger among poor children. You will be pleased to know that I nominated Ms Sethole for the Shoprite Checkers Woman of the Year Award for her innovative leadership and her concern for poor children. The truly remarkable leadership of Ms Sethole and the commitment of her staff have created confidence among different people and organisations to invest in the school. The Japanese Government, represented here by Ambassador Matsui, built a Media Centre and three classrooms. The Media Centre houses books donated by BMW and the computers that contain the Microsoft software I will talk about soon. It is my pleasure also to take this opportunity to officially open the Media Centre today. A school that demonstrates such remarkable achievements and a will to succeed deserves to be targeted for assistance. Therefore, I shall approach the Nelson Mandela Foundation to assist the school to build the two extra classrooms it needs and to erect a palisade fence around the school. I also wish to appeal to the Tshwane Metropolitan Council to reconsider the R1 000 fee they charge this school and other schools for the use of community sports facilities. In his State of the Nation Address in February 2002, President Mbeki announced that Microsoft had made a commitment to provide free software to all the government schools in South Africa. In May 2002, I publicly signed and announced the national agreement with Microsoft. Since that announcement Microsoft has been working in collaboration with my department as well as the provincial education departments to finalise the smooth delivery of the software to schools. As a follow up to this announcement, Microsoft has undertaken to train teachers to ensure that they have the necessary skills to use technology to improve teaching and learning and administration of schools. The training of teachers is very crucial for the best use of this generous donation from Microsoft. The training is in itself a great contribution to the implementation of our national human resource development strategy. Already progress has been made towards training teachers in the use of computer technology as part of this programme. On 2 July, the Deputy Minister of Education, Mosibudi Mangena launched the Teacher Technology Orientation Programme, which is an initiative to train provincial trainers in the use of information technology. It is these provincial trainers who will carry out the training of teachers in schools. While we are aware of Open Source Software developments undertaken worldwide and in our country, we believe that this donation would fast track the development of basic computer literacy among our youth. This will increase the number of people with the skills necessary to fully develop and implement useful computer solutions in our country. My Department is finalising a Draft White Paper on e-Education that will serve as a blueprint of our vision for using information and communication technology to transform our approaches to teaching and learning. The software donation offers our schools a window of opportunity to experiment and exploit interactive technologies and communication systems to improve the learning experience. I have to tell you that while I am grateful to my teachers, learning during my time was very uninspiring. Frankly, it was downright boring. In History, for example, I had to learn over 2 000 dates. Can you believe it? By the way I still remember those dates. But this is not the experience of learning we want our children to go through. Information and communication technologies have the potential to make learning far more exciting than memorising 2 000 dates. In today's world the issue is not the amount of information you can cram into your head. Information is readily available on the internet, so remembering things for its own sake cannot be seen as a sign of wisdom as was the case during my time as a child. What is important today is how you process the information you have at your disposal to construct knowledge and to frame arguments. Ladies and gentlemen, we are here today to announce and celebrate that Microsoft has already delivered software to more than 1 500 schools throughout the nine provinces of our country. I am extremely pleased to report that the process of rolling-out the free software donated by Microsoft to schools has begun and is gaining momentum. We have put in place basic plans for the smooth rollout of the software to our public schools. It is very significant that the contract, which I signed on 22 May 2002, entails the provision, by Microsoft, of free software to all our public schools. Schools will be licensed on an annual basis to ensure that computers acquired during the year are licensed as soon as possible. I would like to urge schools to contact Microsoft in order to access the donation. I should reiterate that schools will have to sign a contract with Microsoft that will ensure that they commit themselves to acting responsibly to protect the intellectual property rights of Microsoft and to prevent piracy. The principal and the chairperson of the School Governing Body will sign the contract and return it to Microsoft. Microsoft will then return a copy of the signed contract to the school together with packages of the software programmes that the school will have requested. I wish to emphasise again that the software cannot and should not be used for anything other than non-profit educational purposes. The Government does not want to hear of any abuse of this donation. I want to assure Microsoft and all our partners that the Government will take stern action against anyone who will be found to have abused the software donation. It is very pleasing that teachers can also take advantage of the software that has been made available to schools. The software can be installed in personal computers belonging to full-time teachers. I am very hopeful that teachers will use the software to prepare lessons and to manage their school and classroom records. Our aim in the long term should be "for every teacher, a personal laptop!" This will place a powerful tool in the hands of our teachers. No doubt, our children will be the ultimate beneficiaries. Microsoft has offered a comprehensive list of programmes to public schools. The company has also supplied details of technical support, which can be accessed through the telephone. A toll free number is available to ensure telephone support to assist in technical queries. I remain hopeful that other technology-related companies will follow the giant steps of Microsoft by donating hardware to schools to ensure the software donation is accessible to most of our schools. For my part, I shall be seeking a meeting with the South African Local Government Association (Salga) to explore ways in which electricity and other relevant services can be provided to schools in an affordable and sustainable manner. We do this because we want to ensure that the Microsoft donation reaches the most remote of our schools, and that the lack of electricity should not act as a barrier to the ability of schools to access the software. The software donation is a stepping stone towards building bridges for our learners to access and use technology. It will assist us in our fight against the North-South information technology divide, which repeats itself internally in our country as the "digital apartheid" between the rich and the poor. This is a great investment in the future our children, and I want to once again thank Microsoft for this generous donation, and on behalf of the school and my Ministry, I thank the Japanese Embassy for building the resource centre in this wonderful school. I thank you. Ke a leboga Issued by Ministry of Education 30 July 2003 |
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