Three Eastern Cape schools will receive a maths and science support plan funded by the Nordex Education Trust – the empowerment arm of the German wind turbine company Nordex; EPC Contractor of three (3) of South Africa’s wind farms namely Dorper, Kouga and Amakhala Emoyeni. The three schools are Molteno High School and Joe Slovo Secondary School in Molteno as well as Siyaphakama Senior Secondary School in Sterkstroom.
Says Anne Henschel, Managing Director of Nordex South Africa: “As a strategic partner to rural communities in the Eastern Cape, Nordex recognises the need to facilitate skills development in science, commerce, engineering and technology in the region. The funding for this initiative is a way to launch, expand and maintain innovation in South Africa’s teaching and learning of these important subjects.”
Nordex has collaborated with the Govan Mbeki Mathematics Development Unit at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University to support its innovative and modern video-based techno-blended teaching and learning model (BT&L) for mathematics and science known as TutorTouch™. Nordex will hand over the training material and ICT equipment to the schools. It includes 18 desktops and seven laptops with TutorTouch™ software, 1 dataprojector per school, a scientific calculator and learner workbooks for each learner in grades 10 -12, all worth approximately R250 000. In accordance with the terms of the collaboration, the team – Nordex, NMMU, GMMDU and the school principles – the computer equipment will be placed under the care of the maths and science teachers at each school and will be housed in the library.
The TutorTouch™ maths and science software is being used extensively in project implementations by GMMDU to empower teachers to use the laptops in their teaching methods along with the accompanying learner workbooks. These resources are supported by video content lessons of the TutorTouch™ package to complement the unique learning module.
Says Professor Werner Olivier, Head of GMMDU: “These three schools represent an extension of the succesful Tablet-assisted incubator school projects in Queenstown which have been developed by GMMDU and NMMU”.