The UWC Social Network is a Shuttleworth Foundation-funded project that will extend the existing tuXlab radio network to enable schools running the solution to connect to the University of the Western Cape and interact with purpose built content servers housed at the university. The connection will be established using wireless networking infrastructure.
The project aims to provide access to methodologies and technologies that will enable collaboration amongst learners and teachers, while providing for video and audio communications over what is essentially a wide area network. This will provide learners and teachers with access to information resources and communications tools.
The network will not, however, connect the schools to the Internet, but will rather provide them with content via servers on the network. Providing an uplink to the Internet is too costly and largely unsustainable at this stage.
The content provided will focus mainly on Maths and Science. There will also be a focus on training teachers on using the resource effectively and managing it within the classroom environment.