Impressions from study visit in Port Elisabeth
When I was 10 I saw Nelson Mandela’s liberation on TV and that was a moment when the world came to me. 30 years later I went to Nelson Mandela’s country for the study visit ‘Digital literacy for young people with fewer opportunities’ in Port Elizabeth. This project is funded by European Union Erasmus + programme.
During the week delegations from Lithuania, Nigeria, South Africa and the Netherlands in Port Elizabeth visited great organisations, delivered workshops and exchanged and shared knowledge, networks and ideas.
Within this team we had a chance to explore the importance of digital education for children / young people. Nowadays young people can find anything online. The most important thing is that internet opens opportunities for (blended) learning. With connection to WiFi you travel around the world being in your room. What I learnt is that nowadays children and youth can establish connections and find all the information they need even beyond their hometown and territories they live in. Digital resources for everyone in the world are at your fingertips. The important challenge is to bring this in the attention, teach teachers, youth workers and counselors how to use digital resources. Above all ensuring that the children / young people can access and experience that, is really very important.
Having all this context in mind, we have launched a digital ‘Cities and Regions of Learning’ platform for South Africa where all kinds of learning opportunities are possible. See: https://eastern-cape.regionoflearning.eu and the Playlist of our study visit. And there are more cities and regions like us! If you want to know which cities and regions also have a learning platform, look here: https://www.citiesoflearning.net
Organisations that we have visited:
Masifunde: https://www.masifunde.org
Uviwe: https://www.uviwe.co.za
Nelson Mandelay Bay i-HUB: https://www.facebook.com/SNII.ZA/?fref=nf
Ubuntu: https://ubuntupathways.org
The Propella https://thepropella.co.za
Ready4life: https://ready4life.org/nl/
South Africa is a country with many contradictions. But what an energy and eagerness to learn and to continue the process of development they have! That can be done by means of digitalising and sharing information on various learning platforms such as in: Eastern Cape, Vilnius, Tilburg, Lagos Nigeria and many other.
Our next visit of this project will be in Vilnius City of Learning
#DigitalGererationYouth #digitalskills #DigitalLiteracy
Participant Anna de Rijk
Add Review