INTRODUCTION
Hai Ti Home - Cover / Introduction
Volume 1 : Page 1/ 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / Glossary
Volume 2 : Page 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 / 26 / 27 / 28 / 29 / 30 / 31 / 32 / 33 / 34 / 35 / 36 / 37 / 38 / 39 / 40
Hai Ti!: SchoolNet says it's time
to listen up and go digital!
SchoolNet Namibia is taking a bold new step to entice teachers and students into the digital world. SchoolNet has teamed up with Direq International, Strika Entertainment and The Namibian Youth Paper to produce and distribute Hai Ti!, a comic strip that spreads the word about the ways that computers and the internet can transform learners' and teachers' lives.
It's a new and highly innovative approach to a common problem. "Our
numerous letters, manuals and trainers have not been very effective in
bringing teachers into the computer lab. So we decided to build a character-based
drama around the SchoolNet team and teachers and learners at a remote rural
school in Namibia," says executive director Joris Komen. "There
has also been a lot of controversy about the compatibility of Free and
Open Source office applications and programmes with similar (and usually
very expensive!) proprietary software more commonly used in the private
sector. We expect Hai Ti! to finally put such controversy to rest. The
skills acquired by teachers and learners to cut, copy and paste, and
use office tools such as word processors and spreadsheets, as well as
the Internet,
must be completely platform neutral, without affecting their career and
learning opportunities."
In order to demystify the computers that have proven so alluring to learners
but not so much to teachers, SchoolNet collaborated closely with Strika
and Direq to conceptualize, illustrate and produce a full-colour comic.
Desiged to address educators' fears, SchoolNet staff - young, technically
savvy Namibians - drew from their own experiences to craft the narrative.
The first 20-page comic (Volume 1) interweaves
the stories of a learner who uses the internet to prepare for a debate;
of a football fan who
learns
that
the
Internet can be a better source for sports than the "cuca shop" (Shebeen);
and of a young teacher learning computer basics with the help of SchoolNet
trainers. The comic, liberally sprinkled with helpful definitions and
basic tips, doubles as an easy reference manual afterwards. Each edition
will
also be published online at Schoolnet's website, www.schoolnet.na/haiti.
For Volume 2, page-by-page inserts will be
distributed in The Namibian Youth Paper on a regular basis for the remainder
of 2005, Subsequent Volumes will be published for the next few years,
with bumper Christmas annuals,
and loads
of competitions as added bonuses!
The first edition of Hai Ti! was included in the April 26th edition of The Namibian Youth Paper. Look out for more to come!
Hai Ti! is unique in being the first publication of its kind to be published under international Creative Commons rules in Namibia.
In particular, SchoolNet Namibia has elected to have the Hai Ti Comics licensed under a generic
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
