AUP - recipe for success!

For the past month the second phase of ZSP schools have been working hard on their AUP.

What is an AUP? Acceptable User Policy. This is the document that regulates how the computer centre is organised, maintained, kept safe, how educators use the new facilities, and how the different responsibilities for the upkeep of the facilities are allocated to the ICT Committee.

This may not sound too important, but these policies are crucial in ensuring that the computer centre is used optimally, for delivering numeracy and literacy lessons and in supporting educators with their admin tasks.

As part of this process, it is important that the schools involved formulate policies that will help them to keep their computer centre functioning to the best of its potential and also minimise any risks e.g  how to stop viruses being spread via USB sticks.

The ZSP Team provided each school with a list of topics would need to be addressed by the AUP, we were also available to advise schools during their discussions.  In some schools the whole staff have sat down together to decide on their AUP.

By the time the technology arrives at the schools, this recipe for success will be in place.

Report from Thomas Wildschutt Primary learners

To see the full size report click on the link:
Thomas Wildschutt learners' report

This is an excellent record by the learners of the work that has been happening at their school.
As you can see they are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the technology.

Thanks to Justin O Ryan, Grant Solomons, Liam Ram, Takatso Hlasa and Mr Ryklief.

What do the learners think? Quotes from St Mary's Primary

Mitchell's Plain Cluster: Progress to date

The Control Board meeting was held on Friday July 30th. The Control Board meeting is a chance for all the stakeholders  to report how they are progressing towards the strategic objectives of the Project.

It was a very productive and encouraging meeting where the full scope of the Project was clearly demonstrated. To document all the feedback would take too long, but some key points that were shared included:

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  how many extra learners had received much needed food at school
• 
  
  how a holiday feeding scheme had been put in place
• 
  
  the details of peer educator HIV training
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  the screening and treatment of learners with eyesight difficulties in a pilot project at one school
• 
  
  the development of lab assistants and a community ICT technician
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  the training and development of educators who had little or no exposure to computers prior to ZSP
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  the focus on using computers as an important tool in raising the standards of numeracy and literacy in the Mitchell's Plain cluster schools

Part of the meeting was an honest assessment of the strategies needed in the next six months to allow further progress to occur.

An example of what is happening in the schools. Below is a video (please excuse the quality as it was shot using a cell phone) of  grade 1 learners (6-7 years) totally engrossed in their maths...one of the ZSP successes!