AT the annual Presidents’ Awards of the Institute of IT Professionals South Africa, Professor Jean Greyling, from Nelson Mandela University Computing Sciences, received the distinguished service in ICT award.
Greyling was the IITPSA Eastern Cape 2019 IT personality and is widely recognised for his outstanding contributions to school and university ICT education in the Eastern Cape and nationally.
He promoted IT careers and specifically programming, using the TANKS, RANGERS, and BOATS apps, to school children with limited access to computers. Since the launch of TANKS in 2017, coding boot camps have been presented to tens of thousands of learners.
Greyling was invited to UNESCO’s flagship Mobile Learning Week in Paris, as a plenary participant and the project has received various other accolades.
“This award comes as an acknowledgement firstly to the brilliant TANKS app, developed by honours student, Byron Batteson, in 2017.
“The impact would not have been possible without our official implementation partner, Leva Foundation, various corporate sponsors and other partners,” said Greyling.
“Then I must mention our very passionate coding evangelists who introduced coding from city to township to deepest rural village.
“We are currently in the process of rebranding the project to Tangibl Africa, with the tag line Demystifying Code.” Greyling said Tangibl referred to their vision to make abstract coding concepts more concrete and real (demystified) to both teachers and learners.
“We already have a footprint in various other African countries, including Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Burkina Faso,” said Greyling.
Future projects this year include focusing on the training of teachers in all nine provinces and coding tournaments in various sites on Mandela Day, July 18.
For more info contact Jean Greyling on 083 554 4183 or jean.greyling@mandela.ac.za.
