Deputy Science and Technology Minister, Derek Hanekom, has congratulated local learners for winning the international Oracle ThinkQuest Narrative Competition in the under-12 age group.
Last week, the deputy minister met with the team of six Eastern Cape learners to honour them for their winning efforts in designing a Web site on South African tourist destinations.
The winners have jetted off to San Francisco, for five days, where Oracle will award each of them with laptops as prizes.
The winners include two students from Cotswold Preparatory in Port Elizabeth, and four from Stirling Primary in East London. The South African team competed against 1 200 teams from 26 countries in total, across all categories. In addition, the two schools won a R40 000 joint-award.
“I want to genuinely say well done to the learners,” said Hanekom. “It's a great initiative because it encourages creativity, learning and participation. If SA is going to compete with the rest of the world, than we have to master technology. IT opens a new world to us and we should broaden our horizons to embrace technology.”
He added that the competition provides an introduction to people, “especially amongst these learners, who have never had free access to a computer and who have never owned their own computer, and developing their understanding of what it [technology] is able to do”. It also allowed them to explore boundaries and what can be achieved through teamwork, said Hanekom.
The ThinkQuest Project was created by the Oracle Education Foundation, a non-profit organisation funded by Oracle. The competition is divided into three categories, namely, the under-12, under-15, and under-19 divisions.
ThinkQuest is an online learning platform that enables teachers to integrate learning projects into their classroom curriculum and students to develop 21st-century skills.
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