FAQ

A: This book is Siyavula’s response to a call for help from Life Sciences educators for a comprehensive teaching resource for 2012.

A: Despite textbooks being authored, many learners still don’t have textbooks – Siyavula is providing a web-based authoring solution that guarantees that the book is automatically available in PDF for printing, ePub for ebook readers, on the web for browsers and on your mobile phone – see m.siyavula.cnx.org – which means that you are creating a resource that will be available to ALL South Africans.

A: Every Life Sciences learner could own a copy of this textbook! It is possible for educators to print this book while remaining within their school’s printing budget. If printed in reasonable volumes (1000+) these books can be very cheap because they are royalty free. Our 350 page physical science book can be as cheap as R32 per book at 4000 units.

A: There isn’t one book out there that comprehensively fulfils an educator’s needs. Educators still mainly teach from notes compiled and created from a variety of resources, which is a time consuming process. This book will help address this, and will be a great supplementary resource.

A: This textbook will be available to everyone for free on the internet, which allows for the book to be continuously built upon, new resources and rich media added, errata submitted and new versions created – in line with Siyavula’s vision for education in South Africa.

A: Siyavula worked with subject specialists to help create the appropriate curriculum aligned framework and style guides that ensured an efficient process on the creation weekend.

A: As educators predominately work from a set of notes which they have created over the years, these notes formed the basis of the new textbook.

A: Educators and post-graduate students contributed their own Life Sciences resources that they were happy to openly share. One person may have had more comprehensive notes for one section and less for another, but by pulling a large enough community together, we had enough notes to form the first draft of a book.

A: Educators and post-grad students selected which sections they wanted to work on. Using their own notes, and those shared by the rest of the educators present, paper prototyping helped them select the relevant content to turn into a chapter, according to the framework and chapter guidelines that were agreed upon. Rich-media is being added over time to the relevant places.

A: A custodian was selected from each group, who copied this content across to form one coherent document per chapter. While this took place, content was sourced to fill any gaps.

A: There were trained facilitators and technical support on hand.

A: We welcome a broad community! If you feel that you have appropriate teaching notes and knowledge to add to a community driven Life Sciences textbook we would love to have you participate.

A: If you are a post-graduate student with a background in Life Sciences / Biology; a FET educator; or a curriculum advisor / curriculum specialist, we would love for you to come on board.

A: The greater the variety of resources we can include, the better it will be for the book. As long as the resources are available in an editable format (Word, Open Office, PowerPoint), we would love for them to be contributed as it all adds to a richer textbook! Practicals, worksheets, worked examples, diagrams and real life applications are all welcome, especially those that reflect the new South Africa, that are demographically and culturally sensitive.

A: We have coined the term “WebBook” for our series of Maths and Physical Science textbooks, which applies to the Life Sciences book too. This is due to the online videos, simulations and assessment items that will be linked to in the book in the appropriate places – we’ve done this for our Maths and Physical Science textbooks – the same will be done for Life Sciences! We’ve built the pipeline to elegantly produce a print version that has shortcodes to link to the online resources. This will help educators who are struggling to integrate ICT in their lessons – we’ll put links to the right resources, in the right place in a curriculum-aligned textbook.

A: All the rich media will be open and can be provided offline on a DVD for your class or computer lab.

A: We’ve built an online assessment bank were questions can be shared – we’ll make sure all the exercises and their solutions end up in it. We’re working hard to make it better – it is free and open of course – www.fullmarks.org.za – it still needs a lot of work but much is underway. In the book all exercises link to their solutions in the bank.

A: The book will also differ in that it will be compiled by the end-users (educators) and maintained by the end-users. Our aim is to create a community around the content, and start a discussion thereof, with the intention of this leading to the emergence of higher quality teaching resources and innovation for all.

A: Using our online annotation tool, we will gather comments, discussion, errata and resource requests for the book. This is an online community driven website where comments are reflected in the text, creating a feedback loop and facilitating ongoing community participation beyond the Life Sciences weekend. It is a place for you to check feedback from other educators on anything in the book. Each annotation goes into a ticketing system so nothing is lost and there is a complete public record of any feedback, and what action was taken related to the feedback.

A: The final result will be a textbook which is a tour guide to a world of online resources that is maintained by a community, saves everyone time and gives everyone access to better resources to support their teaching.

A: Community – this will be your book! That is really powerful!

A: Educators contributing resources need to be willing to make them available under a Creative Commons open copyright licence (CC-BY). This means that you agree to the work being freely available for any person or organisation to copy, edit, download, remix and redistribute it, as long as you are credited for it.

A: You may have created your teaching resources by drawing on a variety of textbooks, other educators’ notes and tests, and online material etc. As a result of this you may be unsure as to whether or not you are legally allowed to share your work openly with the Life Sciences community. Work that has been copied wholesale from resources under “All rights reserved” copyright licenses is problematic and we will need to re-develop it. Other participants in the weekend may be able to replace the copied content with their own work. Curriculum-specified definitions etc. will be word-for-word the same as other books but this is not copyright violation. Using other resources for inspiration and ideas but producing your own work is fine.

A: There will be a committee who will review the book after the weekend is over. If you are willing to continue volunteering your time and knowledge, Siyavula will continuously support you in the process. But, as a volunteer, you are under no obligation to continue contributing or editing the texts.

A: We encourage participation and communication to continue, and provide many platforms for this to be possible. One such platform is the online annotation tool which you can use to comment on the text. Comments take the form of errata, teachers’ notes and resources suggestions.

A: The community will be made aware of any improvements or changes made to the textbook. The original first edition will always be available online and major changes will be made in derived editions of the text.

A: By adding a Grade 10 Life Sciences resource to the list of free and open textbooks, we are adding to the pool of open educational resources available to all South African educators, and with your Life Sciences contribution we can transform learning in our country!

A: We believe that for more effective education we need a larger, more diverse pool of resources to draw on and this resource would be a safe (from a legal perspective) starting point for educators, increasing the likelihood of adaptations being shared back.

A: We want to work in a sector where effective collaboration, education and technology usage is pervasive where we can explore new, exciting ideas and innovations.

A: We try to add value in ways that do not impact on the openness and availability of the resources, for which we can charge.

A: We manage the process of producing printed books which are sold with a small mark-up. You can print them yourself if you like.

A: We provide paid courses on various aspects of the open value chain, copyright for educators, tools for collaboration, technology integration into various subjects etc.

A: We provide paid services related to the analysis of meta-data collected about the various open educational resources available.

A: All the resources and all the software used is freely available for educators.