Grade 8 – 12 learners at Union High School will have their textbooks, known as e-books, on their tablets, and are able to connect to the school’s Wi-Fi system and network, and receive updates, notes and homework sent to them by their educators, as soon as they enter the school campus. All classrooms at the school are equipped with data projectors, and each educator has a laptop to enable them best to utilise technology in teaching. Educators are able to “push” content into the e-book, and are thus able to customise their textbooks, and add their own knowledge, accumulated over years of teaching, into the textbook. The advantage here, both for the school and the environment, is that no notes will need to be photo-copied, saving masses of paper and costs.
There are many benefits of such a system, amongst them the obvious advantage of a lighter school bag and less books to carry, but also the training in the use of ICT devices, innovative thinking, creativity and problem solving and preparing children for a world in which the use of this technology is essential. The learners are able to highlight passages and generate summaries at the push of a button.
The system has proven very popular with the learners, and their parents, who can’t believe that their children actually look forward to interacting with their textbooks!