Good Shepherd Primary School
'When I got involved in DEEP I was a person who feared a computer - I'd rather stay away from it and ask other people to do whatever I needed! But with the school's involvement in the project I think I've overcome my own fears of the computer. As a matter of fact, I'm almost daily on the computer trying to access information from the Internet. I can't stress the relevance of IT enough, especially for our disadvantaged schools if we look at the huge amount of possibilities that there are for the computer in the classroom as a learning support material. It can improve learning just because it's a resource that provides a huge amount of readily available information, a broad base of knowledge that is relevant to learning'.
(Project teacher)
Good Shepherd Primary School is situated in Grahamstown, the majority of learners come from disadvantaged communities, since the town continues to suffer from ongoing problems such as high unemployment and homelessness. The school has participated in a lot of new literacy and science activities since working in the DEEP project. The project teachers have particularly explored the use of group work to enable all learners to make the most of the sparse access to computer technology (one lap top and one printer/ scanner/photocopier). In the video clip you see how one project teacher utilizes group activity to support a rota of children using the computer to carry out natural science research. The power point is a story made by the whole DEEP class of learners - they wrote the story collectively and then groups were responsible for creating one page of the final story book. Every child has a picture in the book, which has been scanned and used to create composite backgrounds to the narrative.
