09 June 2023
The Anton Lembede Mathematics, Sciences & Technology (MST) Academy is a public education institute located in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province in South Africa. The province covers an area of around 92,100 km² with a population of 11 million. In terms of education, KZN is home to over 6000 primary and secondary schools and 38 teacher development centres. However, many schools lack digital devices and rely on traditional teaching methods.
Conventional teaching methods have become insufficient in recent years. Traditional classrooms are not equipped with modern, digital technology, which prevents teachers from displaying multimedia teaching materials. It is difficult to quantify and analyse the effect of classroom activities, as there is no real-time evaluation or feedback on student interaction, or performance analysis of teachers and students for the school management personnel. The shift to online teaching was fast-tracked following the global pandemic, and schools around the world were in urgent need of remote teaching facilities.
Realising full-process digital education
To bring the Anton Lembede MST Academy into the forefront of digital education, the school adopted the HUAWEI IdeaHub. With it, Anton Lembede MST Academy gained smart teaching capabilities, and opened up options for remote learning.
HUAWEI IdeaHub provides an intelligent digital education solution that integrates whiteboard, screen projection, and remote collaboration. For Anton Lembede MST Academy, the most impressive feature of IdeaHub is the 35ms ultra-low writing latency for smooth writing, which allows classrooms to retain writing habits. The digitized teaching materials mean teachers can reuse materials, and students can review the materials easily after class.
The Academy adopts a hybrid teaching mode that combines online and offline teaching. With IdeaHub, teachers can use multimedia teaching materials in the classroom, and even use teaching software to conduct virtual experiments to transform normal lectures into virtual labs in seconds.
IdeaHub not only improves the in-class experience of teachers and students, but also provides a full-process teaching platform for learning before, during, and after class. Before class, IdeaHub supports omnimedia courseware editing tools to streamline teaching courseware. After class, the comprehensive data analytics of teaching activities is provided to facilitate refined teaching management.
Promoting inclusive education
Breakthroughs in technology are driving the evolution of traditional education. In recent years, smart education has gained significant attention globally, and the successful deployment of HUAWEI IdeaHub in Anton Lembede MST Academy signals the start of a digital journey in KZN province.
Feedback from school principals was overwhelmingly positive, signalling the beginning of a more inclusive way of learning in KZN.
“The pandemic made us realise the importance of remote teaching,” said Xolani Maduna, a teacher at Anton Lembede MST Academy. “We wanted to make e-learning a possibility, and the IdeaHub solution makes this into a reality. What’s really impressive is that we can choose between normal in-class teaching or online teaching, or a mix of the two, making it very convenient for us, as well as an excellent learning experience for the students.”
“The integrated design of IdeaHub does not have high requirements on cabling and network environments, and can adapt to various environments without overhauling the classrooms,” said Dumisani Sibaya, principal of Anton Lembede MST Academy. “In terms of basic education, the IdeaHub helps to easily share high-quality teaching resources and solve the problem of unbalanced resources across the region.”
