Name: Dr. Ron Beyers

 

 

Dr. Ron Beyers was awarded a PhD through North West university in 2010 – “Promoting Human Capital Development through ICT Creativity and Innovation”. This was the culmination of 3 decades of varied educational opportunities ranging from government schools to top private schools. Time spent at the African Advanced Institute for Information Communications Technologies (Meraka Institute) at the CSIR in Pretoria resulted in the establishment of a project known as the Young Engineers and Scientists of Africa (YESA yesa.org.za).

Ron has always adopted a learner-centric pedagogy where the ultimate goal has been creating opportunities which can lead to true innovation. This is embodied in an i-STEAM approach to ensure that all interventions are transformed into meaningful long-term opportunities for the youth. These include empowering learners to take ownership of co-developing content for their peers, producing a team of students who broke a world record for the Formula One in Schools project and were place second in the world for two consecutive years, using MXit as a platform to promote scientific literacy to over 80 different countries, development of FabKids in FabLabs, initiating a program to introduce clean energy education to rural schools which developed into a inter-provincial competition, developing a Raspberry Pi as a digital suitcase for disadvantaged schools, etc. The Digital Suitcase has been acknowledged as an Emerging Innovation Excellence Award by NMU in 2022

He also part-time at the Nelson Mandela University in the Education Faculty for 9 years, primarily in the sciences and media. As an educational technologist he is constantly looking to, firstly develop his own skills, and then to transfer these skills to learners and students through a number of different programs. Lately this has included spending time in township schools installing Raspberry Pi’s, training teachers, exposing learners to a range of educational technologies such as LEGO Robotics, Scratch Coding, Flying Drones, Hydrogen Fuel Cells, etc.’ The Covid lockdown provided an opportunity to revisit virtual training to teachers across South Africa as well providing virtual support to schools in the Eastern Cape. The National Science and Technology Forum South 32 Awards has also acknowledged him in the top 10 Science Communicators in South Africa for 2021 and 2022.

Personal CV Page……………………………………………… http://www.yesa.org.za/ron

Young Engineers and Scientist of Africa……………….. http://www.yesa.org.za/

e-Ulwazi Project…………………………………………………. https://e-ulwazi.co.za/

Internet of Things for Youth…………………………………. https://iot4y.co.za/


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