Educational resources at your fingertips

Easy access to educational resources is crucial to the continuing professional development of teachers. Additional to the learning and teaching materials already available at the Free State District Teacher Development Centres (DTDC), teachers can now also access information on the interactive kiosks or Breadbins.

Breadbins

VVOB supports the Free State Department of Education with the procurement of 6 distribution points for digital content, also called Breadbins, to support the access of educators and office based officials to open educational resources in the DTDCs/Vodacom ICT Centres.

The Breadbins are customised kiosks which serve as distribution points for the sourcing and delivery of digital content (text, pictures, sound & video). The Kiosks run on an open source operating system that enables content to be updated in real time and usage to be tracked and fed back to a central server. Using a touch screen interface, users can choose from pre-selected educational content, preview it and then copy it to USB flash drives.

Access

There is a wireless application allowing devices such as tablets, smart phones and laptops to connect to the kiosk. After connecting to the Breadbin, the Breadbin interface can be loaded on the device and the same digital content can be accessed. This means that the kiosk provides multiple ways of accessing its content making it very efficient.  Furthermore, subject specialists and teachers will have the option to copy the entire educational content provided by these kiosks onto a hard drive and take it back to their schools and classrooms at no cost.

Open Educational Resources

The Kiosks are preloaded with selected Open Education Resources (OER). This content is already used at the ICT Innovation in Education Unit at the Free State University. In addition to the latter the following digital content will also be included:

• All the electronic content and video lessons distributed by the University of the Free State to 64 schools through the Internet Broadcast Project (IBP)
• All the free tools available from the Microsoft Partners Network Site
• The interactive workbooks developed by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and all content all available on the BDE cloud service.
• Any electronic content that the FSDoE curriculum section wish to make available.

The content of the Breadbins is not static. As new content becomes available, the Breadbins can be updated. This means that OERs that will be developed as part of the EU funded programme on Inclusive Education can also be loaded in due time.

Using Breadbins

Between 16 and 18 August 2016 the Breadbins were installed at all DTDCs in the Free State. At the same time the site custodians were trained in the use and support. The DTDC will raise awareness and advertise the electronic content distribution units and its advantages for teaching and learning as well as for continuing professional development. DTDCs will organise information sessions for curriculum officials where they learn how to operate the Breadbins and how they can bring its resources to the schools, especially in the light of support to Professional Learning Communities.

During the Research Workshop held from 17 to 19 August, the Fezile Dabi DTDC already used the opportunity to introduce all curriculum participants to the newly installed Breadbins. Subject advisors are requested to actively use and promote the Breadbins as well as suggest relevant sources to be loaded on the breadbins by the DTDC.

FSDOE will actively monitor the use of the Breadbins. Breadbins that are insufficiently used will be moved to another district.

Location of the Breadbins:

More pictures can be found here.