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Friday, March 11, 2022

Bawokuhle Primary School Kids are on the 4IR PATH...

Many of us may have some questions about this giant step taken by Bawokuhle Primary School. Where is this school and what is happening?

Grade 2s
Bawokuhle is an isiNdebele name meaning "Ask for Greatness" and can be corrected by those who named the school. The school is one of the hard to reach schools in  Mpumalanga, in the Thembisile Hani Municipality, well known as KwaNdebele in a rural village called Gemsbokspruit. The school is a Feeder to Vumabesala Secondary School in the same vicinity. 

On the 09 March 2022, one of the Mpumalanga ICT CLUB member, Florence Sibiya volunteered her time and shared her skills to bring more than 100 grade 2 learners closer to the path of  the long awaited Fourth Industrial Revolution in education through TANKS Coding. 

"I had a great time with the little ones here, they enjoyed the Coding activities" said Florence.  She mentioned how teachers and management of the school supported her with coordinating the kids to listen and follow the instructions from the start of the lesson. She moved from one class to another introducing Coding to the kids.

Grade 2s
TANKS Coding is known as an unplugged Coding, meaning that the code can be written without using a computer but an accessible smartphone app called TANKS powered by Tangible together with cardboard tokens to help the kids to write the code and be photographed by the camera used by the TANKS app. TANKS was developed by Byron Batteson at Nelson Mandela University Computing Sciences under the supervision of Profesor Jean Greyling

"I am grateful to be trained as a facilitator for TANKS by the Mpumalanga ICT CLUB Founder Ms. Nomusa Keninda, and all her support towards the success of the project" said Florence. 

Florence joined the club in 2017 as a volunteer facilitator and IT technician. Like all the Volunteer Facilitators of the club, she is passionate and excellent in her work. Although the club is not paying her any anything,  she enjoys her work and gained a lot of knowledge and skills that will one day change her life for better.