Siyavula has begun hosting termly Intelligent Practice community events in Cape Town, Johannesburg and the Eastern Cape (we’ll be heading to Durban soon). At these events, we ask educators using the service in their classrooms to help us improve and contextualise the service to their teaching needs. Educators have the opportunity to network with colleagues making use of Intelligent Practice  and to discover new usage methods, features, tips and tricks and therefor get the most out of Intelligent Practice.

Below is a summary of what was learnt at our community events held during first term:

1. Features of Intelligent Practice

• Questions increase with difficulty: as the learner progresses through the questions they will notice that the questions adjust to their personal level of mastery. I.e. weaker learners will see easier questions and stronger learners will see difficult questions.

• Topics expand into their subsections: you can choose to be as specific or broad as you would like when selecting what to practise.

Simply click on the + sign next to the chapter topic:

• See the learner’s individual progress: when you are viewing the Teacher’s Dashboard, you can click on the name of any learner and then scroll down and see feedback on that individual learner’s progress. Follow this link to see what the Teacher’s Dashboard looks like.

• Report an error on a specific question: if you or your learners experience any technical errors whilst using the Intelligent Practice service, you can report this to us via the “report an error” button. This ensures that we know exactly which question you were practising when the error occurred.

• Both public and private schools have access to all three grades (Grade 10, 11 and 12): learners and educators can easily choose to practise sections from Grade 10, 11 and 12 making the tool suitable for revision and2. Intelligent Practice educator wish list
  • Learners can “cheat” the system by only practising easy questions over and over again. Educators wish for us to make this as unappealing as possible – it is suggested that the number of points assigned to a question decreases as the learner repeats that question. I.e If the question counts 3 points and the learner gets it right several times – if the learner chooses to practice the same question again, it will only count 2 points, then 1 point.
  • Learners wish to see more detailed feedback on their progress. They would like to see the equivalent of the Teacher’s Dashboard, but highlighting only their own progress.
  • Educators would like to see all the questions available in a section before assigning it for homework – this would ideally be sorted by difficulty levels.
  • Educators would like the ability to print out the Teacher’s Dashboard for each learner – this would be helpful for facilitating discussions at Parent – Teacher meetings.
  • Learners would like to see their level of mastery for each topic in Intelligent Practice.
  • Educators want to see a list of bugs that have been recorded and an indication of which bugs have been fixed and which are being worked on.
  • Educators wish to set the level of difficulty for their class.
  • Educators wish for more control in the sections their learners practice. See the questions at the sub, sub-top level.
  • We need to find a way to ensure learners stay motivated to use the service – we are encouraging educators to help us here, any suggestions are welcome!

  3. Improvements to the service
  

  • You are welcome to keep up with our latest developments, new features and bug fixes by following Carl’s blog: http://carlscheffler.blogspot.com/
  • Siyavula has an entire team dedicated to creating new question content and we are looking for more qualified people to join us.Our team is continuously building more question templates (in both subjects and across all grades) and will do so throughout the year.

  Find out how you and your learners can benefit form incorporating Intelligent Practice into your classroom and become part of the Siyavula – Education Technology community. Whether you are interested in trialing the service or just need more information email carine@siyavula.com and get started.

Check out this one from the Grade 11 Maths syllabus…

Learners using the service will see a range of multiple choice questions, but one of the features that sets IP apart from other practice services is the inclusion of questions that require a longer answer like the one above.  After all, the understanding required to recognise the correct answer from a list is different from being able to generate the correct answer yourself!  The ‘Help! How do I type my answer?’ link provides instructions on how to capture a computer-friendly version of symbols or notations you may need.

Once you have typed up your answer and pressed ‘Check answer’, regardless of whether you are right or wrong, you will then see a fully worked solution like the one below:

As you can see, this solution explains each stage involved in solving this equation, showing clearly how it should be written out in your exam.  It also then shows how IP would like you type this answer in order for it to be able to check it accurately.

IP has been programmed to generate millions of questions like this one.  In this particular example, the first equation has no solution, but it is important to point out that this is not always the case.  IP uses a different starting point (or random seed) when it generates its questions.  It will, therefore, also serve up questions with more than one solution, or no solution as a final answer.

This is a fairly high level question which a learner would only be exposed to once they had successfully answered simpler questions.  In other words, the questions build on the concepts learnt in previous questions. This is also the reasoning behind any brevity in the explanations provided for some of the steps in the solution above.  By the time the learner answers this question, they would have been exposed to the reasoning behind the interim steps.

If a learner feels that they could do with practising a few more questions like this one, they should press ‘Try another question like this’.  If they are ready to move on they can press ‘Go to next question’ instead.

Simple!

As we are a fairly new organization and also approaching the production of openly licensed textbooks in an innovative, pioneering way, we need to constantly reflect on what we have learned from past experiences to inform and evolve our model going forward. With the start of this project, we did just that, and looked back before looking forwards.

So what did we learn from last year?

Firstly, we strongly believe in drawing on the strengths and involvement of the community to produce our openly licensed textbooks. This was reinforced in our experiences with the community last year.

At the workshops that we held for the Gr 4-6 workbooks, the volunteers who attended, completely immersed themselves in the process. We found that the highlights of these weekends was when volunteer teachers were in groups discussing the curriculum, brainstorming ideas and sharing their experiences in the classroom.

Secondly, the focus last year was to actually author content for the books at the workshops. We therefore did not have much time for discussion and rather moved everyone on to Google Docs to start authoring. We found that this was quite a pressurized environment for volunteers to work under, especially with our tight deadlines and the fact that most of the volunteers did not have any experience in authoring. Also, on the technical side, there were many interruptions which slowed down the process and caused frustrations. Overall, it was an overwhelming task to expect volunteers to accomplish in such a short amount of time and we also felt that many of the initial ideas were lost along the way.

And what are we doing this year?

We decided to re-look at our model of asking volunteers to author content, and consider what they enjoyed the most last year and where the most insight was gained from them as teachers in a classroom with practical experience. This was definitely captured during those initial brainstorming sessions at the workshops last year. What better way to allow for those ideas to be shared, than to have a whole workshop dedicated to just that. This is exactly what we did.

In terms of authoring, we now have 4 commissioned authors who are responsible for writing the content. In the Natural Sciences curriculum, there are 4 strands (one per term) which run across the three grades. These are:

• Life and Living
• Matter and Materials
• Energy and Change
• Planet Earth and Beyond

Each author is responsible for one of the strands. They key thing, however, is that these authors came to the brainstorming workshop.

The workshop, which took place this last weekend (1-3 March), was held at the beautiful grounds of St John’s College in Johannesburg once again. We had a group of about 25 participants in total, including the authors and volunteer teachers, curriculum advisers and specialists. Some volunteers had been involved in the workshops last year and so it was very encouraging to see them coming back for more!

The volunteers were divided into 4 groups, one for each strand. Prior to the workshop, volunteers indicated their preference for which strand they wanted to work on, so it was most likely that they were going to be working on area they were most interested in and passionate about. And if not, then we suggested that they use this as an opportunity to learn more about a different subject area and take back the experiences to their classroom to inspire their teaching!

Something else we feel is crucial to our workshops, and to the books being a success, is ensuring there is a diversity in the volunteers present from cultural background, social contexts and different levels in the education system. Bridget Nash, our Community Coordinator, does a rigorous drive leading up to the workshop and contacts many different schools and institutions, and also targeted individuals who we feel would add value to the process. Bridget also keeps in touch with those who have signed up right up until the workshop, giving them the agenda for the workshop, managing their expectations of their roles over the weekend and ensuring they feel comfortable with the process. We really feel this is significant in dealing with volunteers and feeds into their commitment of their free time over a weekend.

After a brief overview of what we do at Siyavula and an introduction to everyone, including volunteers who each said a little about themselves, we outlined the goals of the weekend and what we envisioned the process to be:

• Discuss the curriculum and how the specific concepts are introduced and ordered within a strand. Do they build on each other? Are they logical as presented in the national curriculum?
• Think of interesting ways to introduce a topic or concept that will engage and excite learners.
• Brainstorm ideas for activities and investigations to support the content, specifically drawing on the experience of the teachers of what is practical in their classrooms in a variety of contexts.
• Think about what learners of this age (14-16 years old) respond to, and how we can make the content applicable to them and their lives.
• Discuss how we want to implement the “scientific method”, which will also vary slightly for each strand, and how we want learners to approach science topics, and also the world around them – with a questioning, investigative, curious mind.

In the lead up to the workshop, I had also done some preparation from the content side. This included developing the style and writing guidelines which I discussed with the authors prior to the workshop. Secondly, I produced a concept map for each strand with maps the concepts from Gr 4 to 9, showing how they build on each other and also how they link together across grades, and also with other subjects. Having an overview like this is crucial to understanding how everything fits together, and especially inform how and when to introduce topics.

The groups started out with a general discussion of the strand and going through the concept map. The teachers found this resource to be hugely beneficial to them as often they said they focus on what they are teaching in a grade, but do not take note of what comes before and after. The maps provided a very visual representation of this. Knowing where a learner has come from and where he or she is going is crucial for thorough conceptual progression and should inform your teaching as well.

Life and Living looking at the concept map to get an overview of the strand.

Matter and Materials interrogating the curriculum stuck up behind them.

From this point, it was very interesting to see how the 4 groups quickly digressed in how they were discussing the content and brainstorming. This also speaks to how “Natural Sciences” covers such a broad range of content within the sciences, which all deserve individual attention to see how best to present and teach them. Some groups started with a broad overview of what they would like to do in each grade, whilst others did a more detailed review of each grade. Some groups then went on to interrogate the curriculum statement in more detail and discuss how best to introduce topics and in what order. Other groups drew on the teacher experience in their groups for discussing ideas for activities and practical tasks, especially where a group had volunteers from very diverse teaching contexts. We ended off Friday with a session where the groups shared what they were doing and how they were approaching the content, followed by some cocktails and snacks.

Energy levels were rising as they discussed how to avoid misconception about electricity in Energy and Change.

Earth and Beyond enjoying themselves as they too become enthralled by the wonders of Space.

On Saturday morning we jumped straight into a discussion about the scientific method. I opened up the floor for opinions and insight into how we are going to approach instilling the idea of investigating and answering a science question in learners. We very quickly entered into a debate about the scientific method, its strengths and weaknesses and also how different teachers in different subject areas within the sciences approach it. It was wonderful to see such a lively debate going on and everyone was very animated in expressing their opinions! We took away what we could about how to come to the understanding of a general “method” for investigating and answering a question in science, without  just drumming the “6 steps of the scientific method” into learners and expecting them to memorize and regurgitate these steps. With some volunteers coming from the university space, they raised some insightful points about how learners come away from school science expecting all science experiments to follow these defined steps, whereas in science research, findings often happen by chance and many experiments also do not work. We want learners to start interrogating their investigations at school and not expecting them to always work. We eventually had to bring the discussion to a close otherwise it could have gone on all day, and we still had lots more brainstorming to do on Saturday!

After lunch on Saturday we met back together as a group. We had started to notice that some group were really grappling with some controversial topics within their strands, and they also wanted to know how other strands were dealing with topics that linked to their content to ensure some consistency. We therefore decided to have a space for groups to do just this. “Matter and Materials” had a lot to say! Especially regarding the ordering of some topics within the curriculum which they did not agree with. It was wonderful to discuss this as a group and also get input from curriculum advisors and the Department of Education (DBE) on the curriculum statement. Going forward we have decided that when groups felt there was an illogical ordering of concepts in the curriculum statement, we will make adjustments in the learners’ books to ensure a more sound pedagogy, and specifically make a note of why this was changed in the Teachers’ Guides so that they also know the reasoning for the changes. It was also very encouraging to see how DBE was open to remarks, comments and suggestions for improvements on the curriculum statement going forward. Overall, this discussion really helped to integrate the 4 groups and strengthen the links between the different subject areas to hopefully present a set of books that is cohesive in its approach to science.

It was so encouraging and inspiring to see the majority of volunteers return for more on a Sunday morning! After a brief check in (to see if anyone had had any brilliant ideas or enlightening dreams during the night!), the groups gathered again to finish off their discussions. Most groups actually finished earlier than we had anticipated. I think this also showed us that this is a process that works and is achievable within a weekend – we do not want to have to stop on a Sunday afternoon with participants feeling that they have not finished or need more time. It is a much more satisfying and rewarding feeling for all involved to know that you accomplished all, and more, that you set out to do.

With some of the spare time that we had, Colleen Henning from St John’s dashed off to her science lab and came back with a box to show us one of her very basic, but awe-inspiring experiments that she does with her learners to demonstrate static electricity and how like charges repel and opposite charges attract. We filmed her demonstrations so we know have our first 2 videos for the books! Have a look at one of them below!

Feedback from the workshop

Bridget and I sat with the 4 authors at the end of the workshop to get their feedback from the weekend. They all unanimously agreed that is was hugely beneficial to them as authors and were all highly complimentary of all their group members and how they each had something unique to add to the discussions. The authors felt this workshop has given them a wealth of information and ideas to draw on for their authoring of the content which will also help speed up their writing. They also pointed out that they have learned a lot from the teachers about how learners learn and what they respond well to, which we want to be evident in the final books.

The feedback from the volunteers was also very encouraging – as much as we are getting a lot from the volunteers in helping to produce these books, we also want them to feel that they got something out of the process.

Some comments to highlight their responses:

“It is so nice to feel that someone wanted input from those of us on the ground! Usually we are just expected to put the programme in operation, no one cares what we think. I know this will be a very successful, worthwhile project.”

“As a curriculum advisor, I can say that this was hugely beneficial to me and I feel all curriculum advisors should be made to come to future workshops like this!”

“This was also professional development for me. I will take what I have learned back to my classroom.”

“I have made some new connections and really enjoyed sharing with my group.”

“It was stimulating and inspiring.”

“I was struck by how often we laughed together!”

In asking how we could improve our process going forward, one volunteer remarked that she just wishes she could have sat in on all the groups!

The group at the end of the workshop.

What’s next?

The authors have now started writing the content in Google Docs. I will concurrently start doing some editing, photo searches, finding rich media to support the content, commissioning illustrations and working with a graphic designer on the layout and design. Besides our work within the office, we already know that since the workshop, some of the groups have been communicating with each other, sharing resources they discussed over the weekend and as one author put it, she thanked her group post-workshop for offering to be “sounding boards for further ideas around the task that may flow from our discussions over the weekend.” We are so excited about this and really hope that our workshops are seeds for communities to develop and flourish outside of the weekend, strengthening the network of like-minded individuals who want to share, grow and learn from each other.

Watch this space!

• 2011-2012 – Siyavula ran numerous workshops with educators, exposing them to the world of OER and Creative Commons (+200 educators have attended these events).
• January 2012 – Siyavula (mentioned as the Shuttleworth Foundation) was highlighted by the Minister of Basic Education at the announcement of the matric results
• January 2012 – Schools across South Africa started taking delivery of their free copies of Siyavula’s textbooks, Everything Maths and Everything Science, printed and distributed by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) for all government schools across the country, in English and Afrikaans.
• February 2012 – Siyavula launched their websites for their textbooks under a Creative Commons CC-BY licence: http://everythingscience.co.za/ and http://everythingmaths.co.za/ – Gr 10-12 Physical Sciences and Maths books can be read online, downloaded as PDFs and also accessed via cellphone. A report of the usage for 2012 can be accessed here.
• February 2012 – Some of the Siyavula team received funding to attend the Connexions Conference in Houston, Texas. This was a great opportunity to connect with other international projects and collaborate on technology. As we work at the forefront of technology production for schools, it allowed for insightful sharing of information with the other projects.
• March 2012 – Siyavula was spun out of the Shuttleworth Foundation as a social enterprise, whose shareholder’s agreement states that content must be released under a CC-BY licence, thus ensuring that their openly licensed educational resources will always be freely and openly available for anyone to access and use.
• March, May, June, August 2012 – Siyavula held authoring workshops with volunteers to create openly licensed content for Gr 4-6 Natural Sciences and Technology, Gr 10 Life Sciences and Gr 10 Maths Literacy.
• April 2012 – The Intelligent Practice service was launched, providing an online, interactive learning and testing tool for FET Mathematics and Physical Sciences learners. Since the launch date, there have been more than 4 300 users, completing more than 67 400 exercises.
• July 2012 – Everything Maths and Science launched on Mxit and in three months +300 000 learners subscribed to the openly licensed content. This represents 10% of the learner base in South Africa, and this number is expected to grow in coming years.
• October 2012 – Siyavula received sponsorship to send Megan Beckett to OpenED 2012 in Vancouver to present on Siyavula and their OERs – her talk was extremely well received by the international OER community.
• November 2012 – In partnership with Sasol Inzalo, Siyavula’s openly licensed workbooks for Gr 4-6 Natural Sciences and Technology were printed by DBE for all government schools for distribution for free for the 2013 school year, in English and Afrikaans. These are the only CAPS aligned resources available for schools for 2013. They are available for download from http://www.thunderboltkids.co.za/
• November 2012 – DBE again printed Everything Maths and Everything Science textbooks for free distribution to all government schools in South Africa, proofread and translated by volunteers. The CAPS PDFs of these textbooks are now available for download here: http://www.everythingmaths.co.za/grade-11 and http://everythingscience.co.za/grade-11 (the CAPS web version is coming soon – it is currently the NCS version)
• November 2012 – Siyavula completed their Gr 10 Mathematical Literacy textbook which will also be available on their website and on Mxit in 2013 under a CC-BY licence.
• December 2012 – For the first time Siyavula awarded badges to some members of the Siyavula Community, for their volunteer involvement in authoring free and open content.
• December 2012 – Two members of the Siyavula team were invited by Google to attend their OER Developers Workshop in Mountain View, California in December 2012.

We look forward to an exciting new year and all that 2013 has in store for us!

Volunteering in 2013

Our first priority this year is to ask our volunteers to help with our Grade 12 Maths and Physical Sciences textbooks!

• This week we are going to put out a call for contributions to our Grade 12 Maths and Physical Sciences textbooks from the teaching community. We are asking for exercises, activities, worked examples, and photographs to help make our content even more exciting and thorough! We are busy working on producing a skeleton of each of the textbooks which will indicate the content we hope to receive from the community. Everyone in our community will receive an email about this on Thursday.
• In the next month we will ask the community to help with proofreading our textbooks on a chapter by chapter basis, as we have done in previous years. This is a crucial part of the process, as we want to ensure that the content we release freely and openly is of the highest possible standard, is easy to read and understand, and has content that is correct. We rely on our volunteers with strong subject and grammatical knowledge to help with proofreading, and offer suggestions and possible changes to the text. This is all done online, using a website called A.nnotate.com
• As soon as our English chapters are locked down, we will begin the process of translation. Once again, volunteers are crucial to this process, and we rely on first language Afrikaans speaking volunteers with a background in that particular subject to help with our textbook’s translation. We look forward to working with our volunteers on this again, using the Transifex website.

Siyavula welcomes volunteer input from across the country (and around the world!) as everyone’s involvement is carried out online. This means that if you have a computer and internet connection and would like to get involved, you can join our community by signing up here. We will keep you up to date with all our volunteer activities, and we welcome your input on our various projects.

Badges

We recently developed badges that the community can earn through their participation in our volunteer activities. We awarded some for the first time in December, and we look forward to more of our volunteers earning them through their involvement with Siyavula. The three badges we awarded were for volunteers that authored content for our Gr 4-6 Natural Sciences and Technology workbooks, Gr 10 Maths Literacy textbook, and Gr 10 Life Sciences textbook:

Watch this space for further badge information!

We wish all our volunteers (and future volunteers!) a rewarding and successful 2013, and we look forward to further establishing our community and working with volunteers both old and new.

The Intelligent Practice service is available for Maths and Science Grade 10, 11 and 12.

Why do you need Intelligent Practice in your classroom?

The Intelligent Practice system has many benefits for both learners and educators. The system provides endless homework questions, marks learners work and provides the educator with real insight into what is happening in their classroom. For a detailed explanation of how Intelligent Practice works, please see click here: http://projects.siyavula.com/about-intelligent-practice/

The Intelligent Practice free trial

Due to popular demand in 2012, Siyavula is hosting a free trial of the service for a four week period from the 1st of February – 1st of March.

This free trial will allow educators and their learners to fully experience the service. Use the Intelligent Practice service as a homework setting tool and encourage your learners to practice as much as possible. The service is accessible to the learner over mobile and computer.

The Teacher’s Dashboard will get sent to you every Friday. This will provide you with an overview of what your class has achieved in the week, what work they covered and where their strengths and weaknesses in the material are. For a more detailed explanation of the Teacher’s Dashboard, please see: http://everythingscience.co.za/tour/teachers-dashboard/.

If you do wish to continue your learners on the Intelligent Practice service, we can easily extend their accounts until December 2013. The subscription cost is R150 per learner for the year. Once your learners have been fully subscribed, you will have anytime access to your Teacher’s Dashboard through your own Educators account. Your Educators account will always remain free.

How do you get started?

The trial is available to any school or educator looking to incorporate digital learning into their classrooms. You do not need any special devices to make full use of the system as learners can access Intelligent Practice from their phones, their school computer lab or their home computers.

Register your learners:

Please contact Carine on carine@siyavula.com or 021 469 4748. You will be sent a sign up form where you will be asked to register your learners on. This form must be completed before the 1st of February to ensure you are included in the trial. Your learners accounts will remain active until the 1st of March and can be extended at any point during the trial. The Educators account will remain active for the year and this account will remain free.

To subscribe for the year:

The group that you wish to subscribe does not have to be an entire class or belong to the same class. Please send me the number of learners you would like subscribe to Carine and we will create the invoice for you and chat about the next steps.

Many schools are opting for the parents to carry the cost. Siyavula has created a letter that can be sent to educators motivating for the service. You are able to add more learners to your class or group as we move through the year.

To read a comprehensive blog post about the creation of these Natural Sciences and Technology workbooks in 2012, please visit our Siyavula blog here.

There is much focus on the later grades in high school where learners are grappling with science and maths concepts. But, many of the misconceptions and problems that are evident at this level, often have their roots in the primary school phase. To attempt to improve the STEM subjects in South Africa, we actually need to start at the beginning and secure a strong foundation on which learners can build their future Science and Technology careers.

This is something that we at Siyavula and the Sasol Inzalo Foundation believe strongly in. Not only this, but both organizations recognize the power and potential of open educational resources to make a difference to education in South Africa. This set the stage for a strong partnership to produce resources for Natural Sciences and Technology for Grades 4-6 to be printed by the Department of Basic Education for every child in a government school in 2013.

In attempting to condense all that happened in the space of 9 months, I have sometimes skimmed over some things, but discussed others in more detail. At Siyavula, the idea of sharing underlies everything that we do is, which is why I would like to share our experience of this year and all that we achieved and learned in going through this project.

Designing and planning workshops

In December 2011 a group got together to unpack the project and what we wanted to achieve and how we were going to do it. The initial design team consisted of members from Siyavula (myself, Neels van der Westhuizen and Mark Horner), the Sasol Inzalo Foundation, the UCT Chemical Engineering Schools Project, the Ukuqonda Institute and the Primary Science Programme (PSP).

These workshops evolved into “think tanks” and we realised the scope of the project was growing and growing as we started to discuss what would make the most effective workbook. In summery, some of the goals that were identified during this initial stage are listed below.

1. The workbooks will be available under an open copy right license
2. The workbooks will be collaboratively authored
3. The workbooks will go beyond the Curriculum and Policy Statement (CAPS), making science engaging and exciting for primary school learners
4. The workbooks will be a quality stand-alone product
5. The workbooks and teachers’ guides will be available in English and Afrikaans
6. The workbooks will provide a means to ensure strong foundational base for science learning in South Africa

Some topics were debated at length during the design workshops, and I feel it is worth mentioning some of these in more detail as they helped to set the tone for what we were going to do for the rest of the project.

A workbook or a textbook?

In many schools in South Africa, there is limited or no access at all to other resources and therefore if the book was merely a workbook with only activities, learners and teachers would not benefit from it as there would be no background content to support the activities and act as a foundation on which to conduct scientific investigations.

We therefore decided that we would aim to produce a hybrid between a workbook and a textbook with enough content to support the activities without the need to rely on an outside resource, which many schools would not have access to.

Development of Concept Maps

One of the main outcomes of this project is to produce concept maps which span the Gr 4 to 9 curriculum, showing the conceptual progression in a strand across grades, and also the links between strands within a grade. The Natural sciences and Technology curriculum is made up of four different strands (themes) spanning from Gr 4 to 9.

These concept maps will be very useful to identify any flaws in the conceptual progression in the curriculum and also inform the Table of Contents.

The Concept Maps will be useful to teachers and learners to give an overview of the curriculum in a visually engaging manner. This will enable a viewer to quickly and easily identify where in the curriculum a current topic sits, and what learners should have done previously and where they are heading in future grades. This information is not easily extracted from the CAPS document as it currently stands, thus these maps could become a valuable teaching resource in future.

Below is a detail of the concept map I made for the Life and Living strand to give an idea.

A section of the Life and Living concept map.

Technology integration

Technology integration comes in two forms:

1. The use of technology in the form of rich media (website links, online videos, etc)
2. Technology as a subject

The outcome of the workbooks is not increase the digital divide in South Africa. Rather, the workbook at the foundational layer, is a book on a desk which can be used in its entirety to teach and learn about Natural Sciences and Technology.

The use of technology will be encouraged in the workbooks by including links to interesting websites, online videos, simulations and presentations. This will help to make the workbooks more applicable to the modern world and make science exciting and up to date.

From 2013, Technology as a subject is to be integrated into the Natural Sciences curriculum. The aim of the workbooks is to make this integration as seamless as possible. Technology investigations will be built into the science content and not stand apart. This will hopefully encourage  apprehensive teachers who have not taught technology before. However, the Technology Design Process will be made evident when designing a technology project, as the Scientific Method is followed when conducting a scientific investigation.

Teachers’ Guides

The Teachers’ Guide presents an opportunity to provide an innovative, engaging and informative book for the educators to supplement their teaching and use of the workbooks. An important outcome of this project is to ensure that the Teachers’ Guides are actually used by educators and are useful to them. It will not merely provide answers to questions, but also tips to teachers about how to set up activities, teach a concept, introduce a topic and pointing out misconceptions which may arise. The Teachers Guide also contains all the links, as does the learners book, for interesting websites to visit or videos to watch and games to play, which support the content being discussed.

Collaborative authoring phase

As mentioned, we decided to author the books collaboratively with volunteers over a period of three weekend workshops. At Siyavula, we had only done this once before in October 2011 where we authored the first draft of a Gr 10 Life Sciences textbook. You can watch a video here. We learned a lot from this first workshop, which we wanted to implement in the next set.

In the lead up to the workshops, I did a lot of back ground preparation as the content coordinator for the project. This included planning the actual workshops and what we would do over the course of each weekend, finishing the Concept Maps for each strand and the Table of Contents, deciding on the basic layout for the books and how to set out activities and investigations, as well as coming up with basic style guidelines for authoring (I got some advice from the Primary Science Programme during this stage).

Bridget Nash, our community coordinator set about recruiting volunteers for the workshops and organising the logistics for the workshops.

The 24 volunteers that we recruited were teachers, mostly from Johannesburg, and predominantly primary school. However, there were also 2 high school teachers who participated, and we brought 3 teachers with from Cape Town. This ensured a diverse group of teachers from various backgrounds and experience of different educational systems within South Africa.

Workshop 1

On the Friday afternoon of the first workshop, we welcomed our volunteers to St John’s College in Johannesburg, which is where all 3 workshops took place. I think most of the volunteers did not really know what the weekend would hold and some were nervous about what was expected of them. Despite this, they had taken a leap of faith to come and find out, learn something new and see how they could have a bigger impact on education in south Africa outside of their own classrooms. Helene smit, our facilitator, helped to put everyone at ease before we got to work.

The goal for the first workshop was to unpack CAPS and brainstorm and discuss about what makes an ideal workbook and how it should be laid out and written.  Although the initial design preceding the workshops had already delved into this, it was very useful to get the input of educators. Furthermore, it was a very worthy professional development exercise for the educators as this was the first time they were delving into the CAPS document. We constructed various activities to stimulate discussion and allow for the creative input from a diverse group of educators.

We discussed and established guidelines for writing the workbook. This was led by Rose Thomas from the Primary Science Programme, and although we at Siyavula had already discussed the general guidelines prior to the workshop, it was very encouraging to see such agreement amongst a diverse group of people as to how the workbooks should be styled and written to have the maximum effect.

Volunteers in groups to critique a sample chapter and deciding guidelines for layout and writing.

Educators discussing how to best explain electric current and the flow of charges to Gr 6 learners.

Throughout the authoring of the workbooks and the workshops, the educators worked in groups according to the four strands. This was to ensure that each author always had an awareness of the concepts being dealt with in a particular strand in the other grades. The educators found the Concept Maps to be a very valuable resource.

It was a very enriching experience to see the sharing of knowledge and ideas amongst the educators, and I think this was one of the most influential outcomes of the workshops.

Setting up a gmail account in order to access the googledocs.

The authoring platform that we decided to use was Googledocs, accessible through Gmail. This  allowed more than one author to access and edit a document at a time. Furthermore, the Commenting tool proved to be very useful, especially in the later stages of the process, to communicate between authors, editors and myself.

At Siyavula, our mandate is to encourage teachers to share their resources, and the exposure to one platform to allow for this, was enlightening to the participating educators, who even wanted to adopt this strategy within their schools and cluster groups to share resources and collaboratively author online.

We also discussed open copy right licenses and what the Open Educational Resource movement was about and how it could potentially have a huge impact on South African education and the access to resources. We have found that this is a very worthwhile exercise at workshops as educators often do not know what their rights are and what they can and cannot use in their classrooms.

Workshops 2 and 3

The first objective was to look at what authors had managed to do in the interim between the first and second workshop. There was a “Checklist” to go through and assess the quality of one’s work and then report back to the group about where each author was at and highlight any troubles they may have been having.

We have realised after running several workshops, that peer review is crucial in a collaborative authoring process, and the sooner and more often it happens, the better.

The Thunderbolt Kids.

At the second workshop, we also introduced the “Thunderbolt Kids” were introduced. These four characters had been developed in a previous Shuttleworth Foundation project, called Kusasa.  Kusasa aims to develop analytical and creative thinking in learners, and more effective teaching practices in educators. These characters will be the guides in the workbooks (more about the kids later).

We also looked at assessment and how the volunteers could go back over the content they had written and put in revision activities which could be used as assessment items. We discussed Bloom’s Taxonomy as well as the different forms of communication for assessment (whether it is written, verbal, doing practical work, building a model or acting out), all of which are very important to build into a curriculum for primary school learners.

An image to explain the different levels in Bloom's Taxonomy.

The aim of the final workshop was to focus on brining the excitement back into science, through the inclusion of interesting facts, exciting website links, online videos and simulations, with the help of St John’s College pupils. Over and above this, authors were still busy refining and editing content. This was a very iterative process.

Feedback from volunteers

Siyavula believes very strongly in building a community around a project which will continue to grow. By the end, the volunteers really came to see the value in what collaboratively authoring to create and share educational resources could do for themselves, their schools, and South Africa.

Some comments from the volunteers on the whole process:

• The concept maps were extremely helpful and well received
• Educators were able to engage with CAPS on a deeper level, which they had never done before
• Comments and collaborative authoring was very useful and enlightening
• Educators enjoyed meeting people with different backgrounds and ideas and sharing with them
• They came away with a huge sense of accomplishment and were encouraged at what a group can achieve
• Highest level impact that some of them can have
• Many educators wanted to take what they had learned forward and use the process for their own events
• They found it an intense enriching experience and with an emphasis on personal development
• They thoroughly enjoyed and benefited from learning about different teachers and teaching environments
• The educators found it energizing and morally boosting
  

  The group at the end of workshop 3.

Back in the office

There were many pieces of the project running simultaneously back at the office.

Colours, images and design

Concurrently to running the workshops, we started to work with Brandt Botes, a graphic designer, to work out the ideal layout and colours for the books. We settled on a use of colour which is warm and simple so that it is constructive rather than distracting. Each strand was assigned a different colour and one of the Thunderbolt Kids to be the predominant guide through that theme.

The Thunderbolt Kids with the strand that they will each be most prominently featured in, and the colour designated to the strand.

The kids introduce interesting facts, websites and videos to watch online and new words for a section. These are placed in the margins of the pages. They also ask questions throughout the content, which often leads on to the next section, encouraging learners to appreciate the exploratory nature of Science and question the world around us. During the editing phase, I worked this into the content.

I also commissioned an illustrator to draw images and diagrams for the workbooks. We wanted to use photographs of real objects to show that science is about the real world around us. However, this was not always possible, or else an illustration was needed to describe a process or set up for an investigation.

Editing and reworking the content

After the collaborative authoring phase, I then started to edit the content. It must be pointed out at this stage that the volunteers who came to the workshops were not trained authors. They had never written a book before. And we knew this from the onset with the purpose of rather drawing on their experience as teachers and how they might engage with the content in the classroom. We edited the content to ensure a consistency in style and layout, and also rewrote sections to ensure a high standard. I worked with an external editor in this process and the process was going well. Then…

Huge interruption!

The Department of Basic Education changed the curriculum statement for Natural Sciences and Technology Gr 4-6. The project came to a stand still for a few weeks as we awaited to see the new curriculum and how much it had changed. At this time we were unsure as to whether we would continue or not.

On receiving the new curriculum I did a detailed comparison with the old CAPS to see how much it had changed. The conclusion was bitter sweet. I feel the curriculum had significantly improved and was much more clear and logically presented in the progression of concepts and what was covered in each grade. However, the content had changed significantly. Not only was there reordering of content between and within grades, but there was a big percentage which was completely new. You can view a brief summary here.

After some time and discussions with the Sasol Inzalo Foundation, we decided to take tackle the project again and attempt to still finish it, with a slightly extended deadline.

We also realised that there was insufficient time to hold more authoring workshops with volunteers and we therefore commissioned some external authors to help me rewrite and re-purpose the existing content to align to the newly changed curriculum.

We worked to very tight deadlines and something which I found helped to aid the process of working as a small  group under pressure to still collaboratively author was to continue using Googledocs. I found the commenting tool very useful to be in constant communication with the other authors. It meant that I also had access to the documents from the beginning and so I could start going through and editing and giving feedback as I was going to the authors.

After finishing one section, we once again drew on the help of some volunteers to help proof read. Finally, we had several specialists review the content and make comments which I implemented, depending on time constraints.

Final layout and translation

Once we had finished the content for the workbooks we then set them on their journey through our automated pipeline. This is an area that I was not hugely involved in. In summary, the googledocs were imported into Connexions using the OER Pub Googledocs importer, developed by Kathi Fletcher as part of her Shuttleworth Foundation fellowship. These files was then transformed to LaTeX using custom in-house software. LaTeX is a typesetting programme which is largely used in academia and many of our team members at Siyavula have experience with it. Ewald Zietsman used the mock ups from the graphic designer to then design the styles that LaTeX would use when compiling the PDFs for the books.

Simultaneously, we had to translate the content into Afrikaans. We used a web-based translation platform called Transifex. This allowed us to upload the content and volunteers could then log in to the site and translate sections at a time from home. We used many volunteers for the translation of all of our books and with the help of Transifex, it really helped to speed up the process compared to our process from the previous year for translation. However, we learned that when using volunteers for translation, it is best if the volunteer has a science background in order to avoid terms being translated incorrectly. We also realised that we needed an editor and proof reader to go through the translated content. Overall, I think this was the stage that we underestimated the most in terms of the work required to also produce the Afrikaans versions of the books ensuring that they were of comparable quality to the English versions.

The way forward from here

This year has been a huge learning curve for Siyavula, and for myself. This project that we undertook proved to be much bigger than we initially anticipated. When we first started planning these workbooks at the end of last year, I did not realise what we would accomplish in one year. I knew that we would produce workbooks for Natural Sciences and Technology. But, I never realised there would be teachers willing to give up their precious spare time to come to a workshop over the weekend, that they knew nothing about; I never realised they would be so willing and eager to learn and collaborate with their peers; I never realised there would be such a huge change in the curriculum well into the project and that everyone would take on the new challenge, determined to still finish; I never realised there would be other contributors afterwards willing to work long hours under tight deadlines; I never realised there would be qualified authors who wanted to be a part of something bigger than merely a commissioned textbook; I never realised what a supportive, dedicated and passionate team we have at Siyavula; I never realised we would start to build a community around a set of books; I never realised we would all do something that no one else in the world has done before.

We really hope that next year these books will go out into the schools and inspire learners to take an interest in the natural science world around them, as well as develop analytical thinking skills and crucial skills for designing and solving problems.

Next year, there will be a revision of these books, where we sincerely hope that educators that have used the books will provide feedback, not only pointing out errata, but giving suggestions on activities to include, tips they have discovered from their own class and sharing their experiences of using these resources so that we can improve them further for the following year. This will not only be a highly useful exercise for educators, by sharing their ideas and experiences, but it will also help us to provide a resource which is improving in each revision and adapting to the needs of South African learners and educators.

Lastly, I truly hope that teachers and schools take advantage of all the freedoms that these openly licensed books grant them to share and adapt them to suit their individual learner’s needs in their own context.

You can download all the PDFs of the books at the website: www.thunderboltkids.co.za

The books have been completed, laid out, translated and shared with the Department of Basic Education (DBE). The books are going through the official channels for endorsement, but they have not yet been endorsed. We hope to have a positive response from them soon i.e. that they will endorse the books and make use of the freedom of the open copyright license to print them. We will only know this once an official statement has been made by DBE, but at this stage even though the books are CAPS aligned, they are not yet DBE endorsed.

Free and open digital copies
These books have been released under an open copyright license which grants educators the freedom to copy and distribute them freely. You are welcome to use them in their digital version for free. They also have accompanying teachers guides and graphical storybook companions under the same open copyright licence.

Samples and free digital books
Below are links to samples of the content of the English learners’ books, and a Science Adventures companion for Grade 4. Please note that these are still in draft format, and the workbook samples are not the print quality versions (the images will look grainy). The actual high resolution PDF files are all well over 100 MB in size because of all the images. We’re working on optimizing the size without losing print quality.

The final digital files for use will be released in the next week, with a link posted for you to download them. You can view the sample versions here:

Grade 4-6 Natural Sciences and Technology (CAPS) English learners’ books: 

• Grade 4A (CAPS) English (Term 1 and 2) –  http://goo.gl/8Vsan
• Grade 4B (CAPS) English (Term 3 and 4) – http://goo.gl/o6IfU
• Grade 5A (CAPS) English (Term1 and 2) – http://goo.gl/MHJG7
• Grade 5B (CAPS) English (Term 3 and 4) – http://goo.gl/mx4oR
• Grade 6A (CAPS) English (Term1 and 2) – http://goo.gl/pq7tx
• Grade 6B (CAPS) English (Term 3 and 4) – http://goo.gl/Ukn05

Science adventures companion books: 

• Grade 4 Science Adventures – http://goo.gl/cgCj8

Ordering copies of the workbooks
We request that government schools wait until we hear if DBE will be printing them. Independent schools who do not get the regular workbooks from the DBE are welcome to add their print order to the print-run we are organising for the private schools. Anybody is free to print the files for themselves, but the greater the combined print-run is, the lower average price everybody can get.

We are doing a combined print run for a number of schools and expect the prices to be:

• R95 per volume – thus R190 per learner for the two volumes of +-220 pages each.
• The optional companion science adventures storybooks are also R95 per volume.

To place an order for printed copies and to participate in the print-run please e-mail:

• Carine Grobbelaar (<carine at siyavula dot com>) or call us on 021 469 4749.

The books have been completed, laid out, translated and shared with the Department of Basic Education (DBE). The books are going through the official channels for endorsement, but they have not yet been endorsed. We hope to have a positive response from them soon i.e. that they will endorse the books and make use of the freedom of the open copyright license to print them. We will only know this once an official statement has been made by DBE, but at this stage even though the books are CAPS aligned, they are not yet DBE endorsed.

Free and open digital copies
These books have been released under an open copyright license which grants educators the freedom to copy and distribute them freely. You are welcome to use them in their digital version for free. They also have accompanying teachers guides and graphical storybook companions under the same open copyright licence.

Samples and free digital books
Below are links to samples of the content of the English learners’ books, and a Science Adventures companion for Grade 4. Please note that these are still in draft format, and the workbook samples are not the print quality versions (the images will look grainy). The actual high resolution PDF files are all well over 100 MB in size because of all the images. We’re working on optimizing the size without losing print quality.

The final digital files for use will be released in the next week, with a link posted for you to download them. You can view the sample versions here:

Grade 4-6 Natural Sciences and Technology (CAPS) English learners’ books: 

• Grade 4A (CAPS) English (Term 1 and 2) –  http://goo.gl/8Vsan
• Grade 4B (CAPS) English (Term 3 and 4) – http://goo.gl/o6IfU
• Grade 5A (CAPS) English (Term1 and 2) – http://goo.gl/MHJG7
• Grade 5B (CAPS) English (Term 3 and 4) – http://goo.gl/mx4oR
• Grade 6A (CAPS) English (Term1 and 2) – http://goo.gl/pq7tx
• Grade 6B (CAPS) English (Term 3 and 4) – http://goo.gl/Ukn05

Science adventures companion books: 

• Grade 4 Science Adventures – http://goo.gl/cgCj8

Ordering copies of the workbooks
We request that government schools wait until we hear if DBE will be printing them. Independent schools who do not get the regular workbooks from the DBE are welcome to add their print order to the print-run we are organising for the private schools. Anybody is free to print the files for themselves, but the greater the combined print-run is, the lower average price everybody can get.

We are doing a combined print run for a number of schools and expect the prices to be:

• R95 per volume – thus R190 per learner for the two volumes of +-220 pages each.
• The optional companion science adventures storybooks are also R95 per volume.

To place an order for printed copies and to participate in the print-run please e-mail:

• Carine Grobbelaar (<carine at siyavula dot com>) or call us on 021 469 4749.