Boksburg, South Africa has just received a world first as Samsung Africa launched its Solar Powered Internet School model at the Samsung Engineering Academy. The project is designed particularly for use in remote rural areas with limited to no access to the national grid.
Each Solar Powered Internet School is built in a 40 ft long shipping container, making them easily transportable via truck to remote areas. Fold-away solar panels provide enough energy to power the classroom’s equipment for up to nine hours a day, and for one and a half days without any sunlight. The solar-panels themselves are made from rubber instead of glass to ensure they are hardy and durable enough to survive long journeys across the continent.
The classroom can accommodate 21 students, including several layers of insulation and a ventilation system to ensure a temperate environment is maintained. Each classroom is fitted with a 50” electronic E-board and different Samsung Notebooks and Netbooks, including the world-first solar powered netbooks and Galaxy Tablets for student and teacher interface, all of which are optimised for use in a solar powered environment.
The Solar Powered Internet School prototype is currently being piloted at the Samsung Electronics Engineering Academy in Boksburg. It will then be sent to Qunu in the Eastern Cape to undergo further testing as a functioning learning and teaching environment, with the aim to scale up production of the Schools thereafter.
“We have set an ambitious goal for ourselves in Africa: to positively impact 5 million lives by 2015,” said KK Park, President and CEO of Samsung Electronics Africa.
“The amount of power generated by the schools each day means they can be used beyond the traditional school day as an adult education centre in the afternoons or a community centre over weekends,” adds Park. “Our goal was to create an environment that would facilitate learning for whole communities in remote areas that otherwise don’t have access to education tools or internet connectivity.”
The School is also equipped with an energy efficient refrigerator, a file server, router, Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS), video camera and world first wifi camera, all of which are designed to communicate via 3G. This allows a central location (such as the Department of Education) to monitor classes and deliver curriculum-based content directly to both the learners’ and educators’ notebooks.
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