Step Ahead Primary steps up their teachers’ coding skills
Step Ahead Primary School, situated in Tsomo in rural Eastern Cape, used its own funds to establish a 30-seater computer lab and WIFI zone. This ICT resource centre is made available to learners from the school as well as the education community at large who benefit from its resources. Step Ahead’s mission is to join hands with other computational thinkers in the world in promoting the use of ICTs in imparting the 21st Century Skills to learners. With this mission in mind, Elfas Mcloud, the Step Ahead ...Read more
Just because your school doesn’t offer Information Technology or Computer Applications Technology as subjects, doesn’t mean that you can’t expose your learners to a basic introduction to computer science and careers that use technology.
On 15 June 2018, sixteen teachers and four technology support specialists from Gauteng Telkom Connected schools tried their hand at basic coding at MH Baloyi High School. This session, facilitated by SchoolNet SA, forms part of the Microsoft YouthSpark p...
SchoolNet SA has been working with teachers from twelve
schools in KwaNdengezi that are supported by the Rotary Club of Pinetown to
make more effective use of digital resources to enhance their teaching. As part
of a Microsoft Philanthropies YouthSpark project, twenty four of these teachers
spent two days of their June holidays learning at Hillcrest High School in
KwaZulu-Natal learning some basic computer science skills that they can share
with their learners when school reopens. SchoolNet SA ...
The annual CuriosITy dinner – which was hosted by Bresica House School on 30 May 2018 – gives grade 11 girls who are taking either CAT or IT an opportunity to network with women in the IT industry. This year, a series of hands-on workshops took place prior to the dinner to provide the girls, and their teachers, with an opportunity to try out a range of digital tools.
174 girls and their 50 teachers who attended the workshops were each able to select three 40 minute sessions from the follo...
On 23 February 2018, sixty Grade 10 learners from Lofentse Girls High in Soweto participated in a DigiGirlz event at the Orlando Pirates ICT Resource Centre.
A panel of four young black female Microsoft staff members spoke to the girls about how they got started in their STEM careers, which subjects they took at university and what they are now responsible for at Microsoft. This was inspirational as the DigiGirlz could see some of the possibilities for women who pursue careers in technology. The panel al...
Submitted by Megan Rademeyer
Microsoft is once again teaming up with Code.org to support the Hour of Code. Although the activities on code.org/minecraft can be completed at no cost at any time, learners around the world are encouraged to be part of an initiative to get students learning the basics of coding during Computer Science Education Week – between 4 and 10 December 2017.
You may have got your learners doing the Minecraft themed Hour of Code activities last year, and if you would like to use...
The Hour of Code movement aims to expose as many people as possible to basic computer programming through completing a series of simple activities that introduce basic computer science concepts. At the end of 2016, Microsoft commissioned SchoolNet SA to facilitate a series of workshops to get as many learners as possible coding using the materials available at code.org/minecraft.
Between 1 – 9 December 2016, 41 face to face workshops and 4 virtual workshops were held and a total of 1 874 learners and...
Submitted by Fiona Beal
Have you seen these tweets such as ‘Participate in the #HourofCode’ or ‘Visit www.code.org’ floating around every day on Twitter?
I decided to pay www.code.org a visit to see what it was all about – and what a pleasant surprise I got! In fact, I was AMAZED to see what an incredible website this is. It caters for every age group of learners from Pre-Reader to Grade 9+. The website urged us to ‘Try a one-hour tutorial designed for all ages in over 45 langu...
Are you up to the challenge of the Hour of Codeâ„¢?
The Hour of Code is a global campaign to demystify code and encourage everybody to learn the basics of computer science. Microsoft is proud to be a founding partner of Code.org. and together they have developed some great Minecraft themed tutorials to introduce basic coding concepts. Globally the Hour of Code campaign is held during Computer Science Education Week (5 – 11 December 2016). During the campaign, individuals and groups around the world...
Omashani, our SchoolNet Intel visionary says she met this Vidcode team whilst in San Francisco at the Intel Visionary Program recently. She reports that they are amazing and are keen to help girls code scripts for video. We thought we’d write about some of their recent contributions to Computer Science Education Week…
Computer Science Education Week started yesterday! It takes place this December 7th to the 13th. It’s a week to build and learn with code – anyone can do it. It’s a...
