Telkom Foundation and the Telkom FutureMakers enterprise development programme have launched a digital Knowledge Hub to bring South Africa’s history to life, connecting young people with their heritage through The Long March to Freedom Museum’s virtual platform.
The new Knowledge Hub will bridge the gap between the physical Long March To Freedom Museum (LMTF) in Cape Town, and the virtual world, creating an enriched learning journey for students and connecting young people to a deeper understanding of their own history.
The Long March to Freedom (LMTF) Museum is physically located in Cape Town’s Century City precinct, and consists of a procession of 100 bronze statues depicting individuals who struggled against oppression in South Africa – from the 1600s until Freedom Day in April 1994.
Figures depicted range from Autshumato, leader of the Goringhaikona people of Table Bay at the time of Dutch arrival in 1652, to Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first democratically elected president.
The newly launched Knowledge Hub allows online visitors to meaningfully engage with the rich story of South Africa’s centuries-long journey to freedom. It is a centralised digital platform that facilitates the sharing, organising, and distribution of resources, knowledge, and information.
The Knowledge Hub is fully mobile and features a range of secure collaboration tools, content management, as well as search-and-discovery functionality.
What takes the hub to a new level of interactive functionality is its gamification capability, which uses online game design concepts and techniques to boost educational context and to improve learning outcomes and visitor engagement.
Gamification makes learning fun for students, while supporting data collection, social interaction, tracking and feedback, to promote innovative thinking and problem-solving by tasks and challenges.
Game challenges within the Knowledge Hub include quizzes, comprehension tests, polls, puzzles, and the chance for students to create their own subject presentations using images and content from the LMTF website.
“We are proud to be able to leverage two powerful priorities of the Telkom Foundation –technology and education,” says Judy Vilakazi, head of the Telkom Foundation. “The new Knowledge Hub takes the existing Long March To Freedom virtual museum to a new level, empowering young people everywhere with access to knowledge of their own history.”
Vilakazi says the project is in line with Telkom Foundation’s support of Telkom ESG strategy to advance digital literacy in South Africa. The project also aligns with United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4, which seeks to use technology to improve gender equality and education quality.
The new knowledge hub builds onto the foundation of the LMTF virtual digital platform, which was also developed through a partnership between the Telkom Foundation and Telkom FutureMakers. Through Telkom FutureMakers, ICT services provider Konect Telecommunication, trading as DigiKonect, was appointed to implement the project.
“The new knowledge hub and the virtual museum help to bring history to life, and to democratise access to one of our country’s most powerful museums,” says Vilakazi.