Our office at the OIS became the new venue for hosting our FHSST Hackathons. Although we have finished with our Hackathons at UCT, we still have work to do on our textbooks. We called on volunteers that we knew were still in Cape Town, and we all agreed on a time that suited everyone, thanks to a great little programme called Doodle. Wednesday 1 December was the day, and when 2pm hit our volunteers started arriving.

We ensured that we were stocked up on the all important coffee and tea, as well as a few bags of chips to keep spirits high. We had two faces that were brand new to the concept of a Hackathon, but as the activities for the afternoon needed to be explained to everyone, we made sure that we did not lose them along the way and that they understood the aim of the afternoon and evening. We decided it was best if everyone paired up, so that any issues within each chapter could be discussed and corrected, but also so that no one got left behind. We had a seven step process that needed to be followed, and so working in pairs ensured that maximum productivity and critical discussions could take place.

It wasn’t long before every pair had been allocated a maths chapter, and everyone was going systematically through the work and checking that previous notes on A.nnotate were addressed, and any errors or omissions were corrected in the book. At these Hackathons we are also going through the curriculum documents to ensure that we cover everything that is included in them, and more where possible! We are checking to ensure conventions are adhered to, that everything is factually correct but simply written, where every new concept has at least one worked example (ideally more than one would be best, that start simply and increase in complexity), and that every set of exercises have model solutions. We are also inserting relevant Khan Academy videos and PhET Simulations into the chapters in the relevant places, as well as applicable slide shows off Slideshare. Natalia and I are then going through the chapters to check for any grammatical errors. Once all this has been done, a chapter is marked as complete and published to Connexions in its latest format.

Before we knew it it was supper time, and an order to Simply Asia was phoned in and collected. We all had a very civilized dinner in the OIS lounge, where I proceeded to camera-stalk the volunteers (we have some very shy ones who try to avoid being photographed, but I managed to get them in the end). By this time we were pretty hungry from all the brain power used, but once the food hit the right spot we were back to work for the last push to 9pm. Which turned into sometime after 9:30pm after we all got engrossed in our chapters again! In total we finished 8 chapters, which includes embedding rich media, and they look really great! They just need a quick once over and then they will be published to Connexions.

We had a very enjoyable evening at the OIS, and there was interest in coming again. To quote some volunteers, “it was actually quite fun!”, which is what we like to hear! Thank you so much to Kosma, Pierre, Terence, Dawie and Steve for coming, as well as to our Siyavula team – you guys rock! Hopefully see you next week for round two.

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