Khensani Primary School, Soshenguve, South Africa
During the summer holidays, I was fortunate enough to visit our link school in South Africa. Khensani Primary School is based in the township of Soshenguve, close to Pretoria and part of the Gauteng province.
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We were welcomed with open arms and the children and staff seemed very pleased to have us in their school. It was unbelievable how welcome we were made to feel in such a short space of time.
Miss Buckley spent most of her time in Reception and it was good to see that the time Freddah had spent in Tithe Barn was being put to good use. All the children were working in groups and towards targets. The new resources given to them were used fantastically well and the classroom, however small, was used to it’s potential. We even had a visit from an Inspector from Gauteng offices who was so impressed with the class that she wants to use it as an example to other schools in Soshenguve!
My role in the school was to develop the ICT for both the Staff and the pupils. After setting up their computers for the school e-mails and giving the staff some training in its use, I managed to get a leading software company to come into the school. 2simple software came in to assist me with the training of staff from all over Gauteng in the use of a program called ‘2create a story’ This program was then given to the schools in Soshenguve for nothing and to others out of Soshenguve at a reduced rate. This will hopefully have an impact on the development of ICT in a whole province.
The children responded briliantly to the use of internet games and teaching tools for their development of subjects such as maths etc and although they are still on a slow learning curve, they were very motivated to do the work and excited by the activities.
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The visit would not be complete however without the interesting things we saw in South Africa when we were released for the weekends. Along with meeting lots of people, we managed to visit the Kruger National Park on our first weekend there, followed by a trip to Pretoria Zoo to meet the Lions we missed out on in the Park!
 
As we left we were treated to more dancing, drama and singing and although we felt sad to go, we left feeling like we had achieved something and with a burning desire to go back. I can’t wait to get back there and see my second family again.
Click on the link below to see the work Amu and myself created as I showed her how to use 2 Create a story and a graphics pad.
Check out the Khensani Weblog on;
http://khensaniprimaryschool.wordpress.com/
While their school profile is available here;
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Or you can see their latest presentation for Link here;
khensani-powerpoint-link-community-development.swf