The Anton Lembede Mathematics, Sciences & Technology (MST) Academy is a public education institute located in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province in South Africa. The province covers an area of around 92,100 km² with a population of 11 million. In terms of education, KZN is home to over 6000 primary and secondary schools and 38 teacher development centers. However, many schools lack digital devices and rely on traditional teaching methods. The Anton Lembede MST Academy broke the mold by purchasing HUAWEI IdeaHub (https://bit.ly/3pYffNp) for their classrooms, signaling the first step toward smart teaching for the Academy and others in KZN.

Conventional teaching methods have become insufficient in recent years. Traditional classrooms are not equipped with modern, digital technology, which prevents teachers from displaying multimedia teaching materials. It is difficult to quantify and analyze the effect of classroom activities, as there is no real-time evaluation or feedback on student interaction, or performance analysis of teachers and students for the school management personnel. The shift to online teaching was fast-tracked following the global pandemic, and schools around the world were in urgent need of remote teaching facilities.

HUAWEI IdeaHub Helps Realize Full-Process Digital Education

Anton Lembede MST Academy is the first school to adopt HUAWEI IdeaHub for smart teaching in KZN. HUAWEI IdeaHub not only enables the Academy to carry out remote teaching, but also thrusts the Academy to the forefront of digital education innovation in the KZN region.

HUAWEI IdeaHub provides an intelligent digital education solution that integrates whiteboard, screen projection, and remote collaboration. For Anton Lembede MST Academy, the most impressive feature of IdeaHub is the 35 ms ultra-low writing latency for smooth writing. It allows classrooms to retain writing habits. The digitized teaching materials mean teachers can reuse materials, and students can review the materials easily after class.

The Academy adopts a hybrid teaching mode that combines online and offline teaching. With the assistance of IdeaHub, teachers can use multimedia teaching materials in the classroom, and even use teaching software to conduct virtual experiments to transform normal lectures into virtual labs in seconds.

IdeaHub not only improves the in-class experience of teachers and students, but also provides a full-process teaching platform for learning before, during, and after class. Before class, IdeaHub supports omnimedia courseware editing tools to streamline teaching courseware. After class, the comprehensive data analytics of teaching activities is provided to facilitate refined teaching management.

Putting Virtual into Campuses: Digitalizing Teaching for Inclusive Education

Xolani Maduna, a teacher at Anton Lembede MST Academy, said: "The pandemic made us realize the importance of remote teaching. We wanted to make e-learning a possibility, and the IdeaHub solution makes this into a reality. What's really impressive is that we can choose between normal in-class teaching or online teaching, or a mix of the two, making it very convenient for us, as well as an excellent learning experience for the students."

Dumisani Sibaya, principal of Anton Lembede MST Academy, said: "The integrated design of IdeaHub does not have high requirements on cabling and network environments, and can adapt to various environments without overhauling the classrooms. In terms of basic education, the IdeaHub helps to easily share high-quality teaching resources and solve the problem of unbalanced resources across the region."

Breakthroughs in technology are driving the evolution of traditional education. In recent years, smart education has gained significance attention globally, and the successful deployment of HUAWEI IdeaHub in Anton Lembede MST Academy signals the start of a digital journey in KZN province.