| BEFSA Patrons |
| Archbishop Desmond Tutu & Jon Snow |
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| BEFSA: A UK and SA registered charity |
UK Registered Charity No: 1106964
SA Registered Charity No: IT666/2006
Not For profit Organisation (NPO) Reg number: 055-187
VAT Registration No: 4680246909
Public Benefit Number (PBO): 930030023
BEE Level One Charity
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| BEFSA Quick Contacts |
keithborien@befsa.org (BEFSA CEO)
catherineborien@befsa.org (BEFSA Chair)
sarahborien@befsa.org (UK Link) |
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Project Detail
Distance Learning Initiative
In conjunction with three major South African universities (the Universities of Fort Hare, Stellenbosch, UNISA) BEFSA aims to develop and take forward a distance learning initiative in which lessons are taught by specialist teachers to large numbers of students in different schools using satellite technology to beam lessons from TV studios within the three universities into classrooms all over the district. The foundation aims to provide good quality distance education, particularly in science and maths, to a geographically dispersed student population throughout the rural areas of the Province of the Eastern Cape. As such it will render considerations such as time, distance and comparative costing irrelevant in the provision of quality teaching and will place students in the rural areas on a comparable footing with their counterparts in the urban areas. It is intended to support the work of classroom teachers as direct interaction between student and teacher is still required in the pre and post satellite lesson. Within the \\\'virtual\\\' classroom, there will be opportunities for internet driven programmes, for interactive television broadcasts, and for teacher driven activities. Each student is able to talk to the ‘teacher’ delivering the lesson in the TV studio via a dedicated telephone. It is in this regard that this virtual classroom differs from other distance learning initiatives. Each classroom will have a TV, a satellite decoder and a telephone handset for each pupil and the school will have a satellite dish on its roof. The costs of creating the virtual classroom are relatively small. Broadcasting costs R450 per hour, R50 for the tutor and R1000 to install the equipment needed into each school.
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