Mail & Guardian reporter
Liberty Life Learning Channel the television programme popular among the country’s matric pupils and teachers is expanding its reach to thousands of its audiences by using multimedia platforms such as the Internet, video and print media materials.
The educational channel is also reaching out to niche audiences, such as adult basic education students and corporate clients, who need professional educational material for their staff.
Liberty Life Learning Channel has been flighted on SABC3 for three years.
The programme’s Zanele Mtetwa says: “Our core business is to create educational content and to use a variety of technologies to reach out to thousands of our taget audiences.”
The various educational content components offered by the programme include:
l Television. Highly respected educator William Smith provides free-to-air live curriculum-focused instruction on Liberty Learning. The programme is also broadcast on TV Africa reaching seven other African countries covering all subjects from grades 8 to 12 including live phone-in broadcasts into classrooms across South Africa.
l Internet programmes. Learn. co.za. Launched three months ago this free access site offers curriculum specific content and activities for learners in a range of high school subjects. The content is delivered in English and Afrikaans with the site averaging 56000 monthly users. Teach.co.za will provide much-needed support for teachers, including outcomes-based education guidelines, access to teacher support material, lesson plans, automated test generators and marking memoranda. Bursary.co.za will provide the bursary management system meant to give students access to a database of bursaries available from different companies and for companies to have access to a database of candidates to award their bursaries to. The site will eventually have a minimal user fee.
l Print media. The programme uses the main weekend newspapers for educational print supplements that reach 18000 schools, particularly in rural areas.
l Seminars. Teacher and pupil seminars, in the fields of maths and science, are held regularly around the country.
ENDS