The Challenge

Mugoidwa Secondary School is in the rural Tshivhulana Village (Vhembe District) in Limpopo, South Africa. Because of its location, teachers and students do not get up-to-date information regularly. Many educators feel that they cannot teach learners effectively because they are without an infrastructure – no science lab, no computer lab, no hall. “We’ve been talking to the Department of Science and Innovation (Stellenbosch University) about media labs in schools,” stated Dr. Mmboneni Muofhe, Deputy Director General Department of Science and Innovation. “We then came up with this idea of doing a kind of media lab that has got all the aspects of the fourth industrial revolution – that has got all the aspects of the green energy technologies.”

Key Solutions

The school designed and built an innovative media lab to help take their students into the technological world around them. A Clevertouch IMPACT interactive display was installed, and Chromebooks are now part of the student learning experience.

Professor Sampson Mamphweli, Professor at Stellenbosch University, revealed, “The impact is quite massive because the media lab is going to change the way teachers teach at school. In line with the fourth industrial revolution...in the past two years, we have blackboards where people used to write using chalks and stuffs like that. Now we’ve got a smart screen.”

“For me as a science educator, this is like a real improvement for me,” said Guven Khorombi, Educator at Mugoidwa. “It’s been what I’ve been in need of because it’s very important as a science educator to do some simulations experiments.”

The Clevertouch IMPACT was found to have the best cross-platform integration, ease of use, and well thought out user experience. The IMPACT has a number of state-of-the-art features such as:

• Super Glide Touch technology provides users with the most fluid writing experience on a touchscreen, and can differentiate between palm-erase, fingertouch, and stylus-writing.

• 20 continuous touch points allowing for multiple users to collaborate at the same time.

• Infinity Whiteboarding so that users never run out of space while writing key points, annotating data, and recording student input. All notes can be saved, printed, and shared.

In addition to the IMPACT interactive display, students have user-friendly Chromebooks available to them. “Some of the learners would be touching laptops for the first time in their entire lives,” commented Ramulmo Richard, Principal of Mugoidwa Secondary School. “Learners are going to be enlightened. They are going to (virtually) go out of the village...because they will be able to see what is happening around the world.”