The Shuttleworth Foundation has decided to cancel the Kusasa project it was incubating. Practical considerations in implementing the objectives of the project have led the Foundation to conclude that Kusasa faced problems with the execution of its vision and to halt all work on the initiative. All resources generated by Kusasa have been donated to schools and made openly available online.
Says Helen King, Principal Advisor to the Shuttleworth Foundation, “We're not afraid to take risks on new ideas or projects and we're not afraid to tell the world when they've gone wrong and failed. The Kusasa project has failed. Not because it was a bad idea or a shaky project, but it became apparent that we would by necessity challenge and perhaps stray from some of the project’s aims in applying a developmental approach to its implementation."
She says that the decision to cancel the project was based on the difficulties in reconciling the original vision with the compromises needed to make Kusasa work under challenging circumstances.
Kusasa aimed to provide learners with free software to model the objects, organisms or processes under study in any learning area while facilitating learners to explore and discover.
“It was apparent that the project success would depend on teachers developing skills we did not initially anticipate,” explains King. “Teachers would need to develop confidence in the Etoys modelling environment used by Kusasa in order to effectively manage classroom interaction. The original vision placed very low demands on the teachers and was to some extent intended to remedy individual teacher challenges.”
“An enduring approach employed by the project was to use illustrated stories to introduce and role model effective thinking,” she continues. “This component of our material, and its relatively large costs, was always hard to align to the original vision.”
“Another challenge arose from the need to provide instructive material in order to develop skills. It was almost immediately apparent that children would need to be familiar with the modeling tools in order to apply them. This meant creating materials to teach the tools, adding a further level of complexity,” she adds.
It was therefore decided to cancel the project, but resources it generated will not go to waste. King says that all equipment in the project has been donated to the schools that used it and all intellectual property created is available online, under open licenses, at www.kusasa.org.
“The Foundation remains more committed than ever to driving initiatives that improve education in Africa through the use of technology and open licensing. Sadly Kusasa was not sustainable and we now shift our energy and focus to ensuring the success of the other projects underway,” she concludes.