Image: WERNER HILLS
Woolhope High School in Malabar is expecting a tech takeover in the new year, after a group of 10 pupils earned 12 tablets and a year’s worth of data for their classmates by winning the Vodacom e-School competition.
The group entered Vodacom’s Door 2 Door eSchool campaign in September and each participating school had to submit a two-minute video explaining what Vodacom e-School was, and how to access the website and data deals in their region.
The Woolhope team was one of the first schools to submit their video among 38 other submissions — with 10 pupils per school allowed to enter.
Grade 11 pupil Zam-Zam Hassan said when she saw the pamphlet she knew it would be a fun activity to do before they started preparing for exams.
“We will be going to matric in 2020 and we won’t have much time to hang out as friends, so I approached our teacher and told her we were interested in representing our school,” she said.
Hassan, 18, said she and her classmates — together with their grade 12 peers — got together every second break for a week to plan the video.
“We decided we wanted to have the best quality and that meant getting a videographer to shoot our video,” she said, adding they all chipped in R67 to pay for the service.
“We divided the video into three scenes.
“Our first scene is in a Vodafone store where we introduce the whole campaign.
“The second scene explains how to get cheap data and what you can use it for, and the third scene explains how to use the e-School website,” she said.
The group captured their message within one minute and 30 seconds.
Excited about their win, Hassan said the tablets and free data would come in handy as they worked towards their finals.
Vodacom Bay county manager for the Eastern region Mninawa Peter said Vodacom partnered with the department of education to set up the e-School website which had learning material for grades R to 12.
The site has all study material available in English, Afrikaans, isiXhosa and Zulu, with languages varying in each region.
“We encourage that e-School be used by both teachers and pupils in and out of the classroom,” Peter said.
“Everyone can access the website and Vodacom users access it for free.
“This is one of many campaigns we will be running for schools and we hope Woolhope will continue with this fire and possible be our e-School ambassador for the Bay region.”