In the Digital Village of the very near future, all schools will be connected to a digital artery of information that connects all other schools, universities and learning institutions with each other.

Picture a community where all schools receive free broadband internet wirelessly—even far-distant rural schools that would ordinarily not have been able to receive internet for years to come.

Picture those schools enjoying the freedom of a perfectly clear voice over IP telephone to the Department of Education. This phone system saves schools money. But it does more than that. Schools that have no telephone access at all can use the Digital Village VOIP system instead. In fact, it is possible to run an entire virtual PABX system on the Digital Village network. That means that multiple incoming and outgoing lines can be accommodated, complete with unlimited extensions, voice mail, call holding and much more.

Now picture the entire school as an internet hotspot. In every classroom teachers and students are able to receive internet wirelessly on PCs and laptops. During school breaks, students are able to surf the net on their WAP enabled cell phones.

Just after break, the teachers get together for a training sessions, along with three other schools which are located 300 kilometres apart. But there is no travelling involved because they will be having a video conference.

Meanwhile, in the school library five students are collaborating on an assignment. They are accessing a free educational knowledge database from a major international university which provides course contents free of charge to the Digital Village. Their research is supported by citations from online libraries that contain hundreds of thousands of digitized books, as well as online encyclopaedias and online dictionaries representing knowledge that would fill entire warehouses in books.

Working with them on the same project, are two students in China, three in Japan, two in Australia, one in the UK and three in Canada.

All of this is made possible by one thing– the existence of a Digital Village.

The speed of the rollout will be determined by the pace at which donor funding is obtained. Ultimately, the aim is to connect approximately 1,000 schools along the Garden Route. The first ten schools are funded by private initiative. After that, a list of 100 needy schools is targeted for the connection