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School networking in South Africa Networked teachers are scarce: Departments of Education look after them! Yvonne
Makhofole provides a hotmail address to get hold of her. She’ll probably be
around her html.email most school afternoons and Saturdays as well. Yvonne runs
the schoolnet in a North West school and her response to the four workshop
questions were as follows: Q1: Tell us about the high points in your project or research programme. I am no longer a teacher. I am a facilitator of knowledge. The learners I teach now know a whole lot more than I or a curriculum can teach because I realise that I’ve been able to teach them how to search on the web. They now do wonderful project work. Q2. Tell us about the low points in your project or research programme. Well, the money is seemingly going to dry up at the end of the year. But worse, I don’t feel as though the education department values me. I have changed, grown, I can manage a school laboratory with computers. I can fix those computers if they break, I am there most afternoons, and every Saturday, but the teachers reward system does not take account of that. I have not been given a promotion, or more money. I must say, I am tempted to look for a job in the ICT sector, in the private sector where they are looking for an energetic, hardworking, person with ICT skills. Q3. Tell us about the people in these projects or research programmes. Oh it is the learners that are so rewarding. Their growth, excitement and sustained interest in working on computers is so rewarding. They come from a little rural town, but they could make it anywhere! Q4. If you were to do this programme or research again, would you do it differently? Explain. I wish the Education Department would know that there are Schoolnet Teachers like me out there who just want to be recognised for what we have done, and rewarded. I also wish we had plans for sustaining the project beyond the Schoolnet SA grant period. We need cheaper access to the internet, or else we won’t have any access, especially when the project money dries us.
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