While those specific books aren’t actively being pursued, they were the seeds for some our current books and a catalyst for the engagement with the Department of Basic Education (DBE) around Open Educational Resources (OERs). I’m not going to review everything that has happened, if you would like some of the highlights then read Siyavula’s Progress to Sustainability, What happened to the last 5 months and Siyavula’s MVP out.

A new curriculum is being rolled out in South Africa, commonly referred to as CAPS. Next year our Grade 7-9 and 12 learners will start using it, completing the roll out. We are on track to deliver the CAPS-aligned reworks of the FHSST Grade 12 Mathematics and Physical Sciences titles (under the Everything brand) at the end of this month for print and distribution for next year.

In addition, our team is working on extending our success, in partnership with the SASOL Inzalo Foundation, on the Natural Sciences and Technology Grades 4-6 workbooks from last year and is nearing completion of the first volume of the Natural Sciences Grades 7-9 workbooks. Those will also be printed and distributed for the start of the 2014 school year.

At the start of the 2014 school year, 11 years after I started with FHSST trying to make openly-licensed content available, the following titles will be available, in English and Afrikaans, to all government schools under a Creative Commons licence (specific licence may vary) and will have been printed and distributed to all government schools:

• Natural Sciences and Technology Grades 4-6 (approximately 3 million books)
• Natural Sciences Grades 7-9 (approximately 3 million books)
• Mathematics Grades 10-12 (approximately 1.5 million books)
• Physical Sciences Grades 10-12 (approximately 1.1 million books)

If we throw in our initial old-curriculum Grade 11 and 12 books distributed last year then we’re over the 10 million printed OERs in circulation (total school learner population 12M).

We have also completed some titles which have yet to be printed but are available in digital format and for printing:

• Life Sciences Grade 10
• Mathematical Literacy Grade 10

Further openly-licensed titles are being developed by the SASOL Inzalo Foundation covering:

• Mathematics Grades 7-9
• Technology Grades 7-9

In the original vision for FHSST we wanted to make sure every learner could access the content they needed to learn. Our journey with Siyavula has allowed us to put books on desks but also demonstrate significant web-, mobile- and Mxit-based uptake which, in my opinion, makes our content legally, technically and practically accessible. Have a look at the traffic to our Mathematics and Physical Science content so far this year:

Maths

Science

You can read about what sorts of things we’re starting to learn from this data in a proof-of-concept report we produced last year.

We’re continuing to make great strides at an ever increasing pace on the openly-licensed content front, no sign of slowing down after 11 years.

So what’s next, we just launched an overhaul to the premium offering around Everything Maths and Science so we’re progressing well on that front. When we’re done with our current titles we’d like to continue pushing OERs into the mainstream. Personally, I’d like to overhaul Mathematics and Physical Sciences 10-12 again, we used these titles to beat down the door to DBE, develop and test all our pipelines and design our processes. They deserve the benefit of everything we’ve learnt in the last few years and we could make them much more interactive and get feedback on how they’ve been used. We’ll also continue to pursue more content production, we’ve identified 45 titles that we’d like to make sure are openly available in the next few years (20 of them will be done by the end of 2013).

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FHSST was started purely in reaction to learners in schools not having textbooks and the fact that learners in poor (under-resourced if you will want to be politically correct) schools actually were prepared to make an effort to acquire the information that would have been contained in those books. Even if that information were mathematical or scientific in nature.

When we started FHSST we felt that the information contained in high school maths and science textbooks should be freely available. This isn’t cutting edge, patented content, it has been written down thousands and thousands of times in school textbooks, many having no meaningful distinguishing features. We thought the time had come to liberate that information by writing it all down under an open copyright licence and ensuring that it was curriculum aligned so that it could have an impact in South Africa.

We wrote Grade 10-12 Mathematics and Physical Science textbooks which we completed in 2007, 5 years of work. These resources had some impact and we did lay a foundation for some educators and learners to take advantage of them.

Since then, as part of Siyavula, we’ve managed to build on that. It took a lot of very hard work but in 2012 2.5 million textbooks, based on the FHSST books, were printed and distributed by the Department of Basic Education in South Africa to learners.

FHSST was really about liberating the information and hoping someone would do something with it, that happened and we did as Siyavula. The distribution of all the books should have ensured that the liberated information actually made it into the hands of all learners but, for various reasons, not everyone got a copy.

Last week we officially launched our books on Mxit, a chat client for WAP-enabled phones, which is extremely popular amongst youth with low-end feature phones in South Africa. The key thing is that mobile penetration is close to 100% in our target demographic. During the course of 2012 the books have been made available in print in huge quantities, on the web, on mobile phones and Mxit, I’m now confident that any learner in South Africa who wants to access the information contained in the books should be able to do so. Not all of them know that they can but the word should spread quickly.

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FHSST was started purely in reaction to learners in schools not having textbooks and the fact that learners in poor (under-resourced if you will want to be politically correct) schools actually were prepared to make an effort to acquire the information that would have been contained in those books. Even if that information were mathematical or scientific in nature.

When we started FHSST we felt that the information contained in high school maths and science textbooks should be freely available. This isn’t cutting edge, patented content, it has been written down thousands and thousands of times in school textbooks, many having no meaningful distinguishing features. We thought the time had come to liberate that information by writing it all down under an open copyright licence and ensuring that it was curriculum aligned so that it could have an impact in South Africa.

We wrote Grade 10-12 Mathematics and Physical Science textbooks which we completed in 2007, 5 years of work. These resources had some impact and we did lay a foundation for some educators and learners to take advantage of them.

Since then, as part of Siyavula, we’ve managed to build on that. It took a lot of very hard work but in 2012 2.5 million textbooks, based on the FHSST books, were printed and distributed by the Department of Basic Education in South Africa to learners.

FHSST was really about liberating the information and hoping someone would do something with it, that happened and we did as Siyavula. The distribution of all the books should have ensured that the liberated information actually made it into the hands of all learners but, for various reasons, not everyone got a copy.

Last week we officially launched our books on Mxit, a chat client for WAP-enabled phones, which is extremely popular amongst youth with low-end feature phones in South Africa. The key thing is that mobile penetration is close to 100% in our target demographic. During the course of 2012 the books have been made available in print in huge quantities, on the web, on mobile phones and Mxit, I’m now confident that any learner in South Africa who wants to access the information contained in the books should be able to do so. Not all of them know that they can but the word should spread quickly.

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Siyavula is a Shuttleworth Foundation seeded project that supports and encourages communities of teachers to work together, openly share their teaching resources and benefit from the use of technology. We believe that it is through collaboration and the freedom to adapt and contextualise teaching material to suit their specific needs, that a higher standard of education can be achieved.

In collaboration with the Free High School Science Texts project (www.fhsst.org), Siyavula is aiming to finalise textbooks aligned with the new Curriculum and Policy Statements (CAPS) to be implemented from next year. We are looking for two (2) dynamic and enthusiastic individuals to join our small team for the remainder of 2011, to focus on FET Mathematics and on FET Physical Science.

Position

Interested candidates should send a curriculum vitae and motivation letter to Mark Horner at mark.horner@www.shuttleworthfoundation.org. We would like to fill these positions as soon as possible and will begin interviewing candidates immediately.

The successful candidate will be required to work in two areas:

1. Primary task: FHSST / FullMarks content authoring and editingWorking on our core products will require the candidate to:
   • edit and author content for FET Mathematics/Physical Science;
   • edit and author assessment items for FET Mathematics/Physical Science;
   • be proficient in mathematics and information technologies;
   • comfortable working on a word processor utilising mathematics and working online;
   • be able to assess and review resources / tools and integrate them, as appropriate, into:
     1. FHSST books, and
     2. FullMarks;
   • familiarity with LaTeX, PSTricks and XML will be advantageous.
2. Secondary task: Technical support of all activitiesThe candidate will be required to provide technical support at events and workshops showcasing the various products.

In addition, the candidate needs to fit into the Siyavula team and the general working environment. This requires the candidate to:

1. be comfortable working in teams;
2. demonstrate a willingness to participate in group work, including:
   1. strategy discussions,
   2. brainstorming,
   3. product analysis;
3. be passionate about
   1. improving education both locally and globally, and
   2. the use of technology; and
4. embrace transparency and openness as a general operating procedure.

Basic day-to-day tasks require that the candidate have:

1. excellent writing skills;
2. a high-level of IT literacy;
3. excellent communication skills;
4. a high-level of independence and initiative; and
5. abundant enthusiasm.

Minimal formal requirements are a BSc. and teaching experience in FET Mathematics/Physical Science. A higher degree and education diploma would be extremely advantageous.

It would also be to the candidate’s advantage to:

1. be familiar with open-source software;
2. be familiar with Creative Commons licences;
3. have knowledge of, or familiarity with openly licensed educational resources; and
4. be familiar with social media tools.

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Background

Free High School Science Texts (FHSST )
The Free High School Science Textbook (FHSST) project is our contribution towards the  furthering of Science Education in South Africa. As young South Africans who believe in building our country, we want to use our skills as scientists to help our next generation by providing free science and mathematics textbooks for Grades 10-12 to all South African learners.

Science education is about more than Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics… It’s about learning to think and to solve problems, which are valuable skills that can be applied through all spheres of life. Teaching these skills to our next generation will help them when it is their turn to make a difference to our country.

Objectives :

• To provide a complete high school science text that can be used for free anywhere else in the world as needed
• To provide a free resource, that can be used alone or in conjunction with other education initiatives in South Africa, for any/all learners and teachers
• To provide a detailed, accurate and interesting text that adheres to the South African school curriculum
• To provide a text that is easy to read and understand even for second-language English speakers
• Make a difference in South Africa through helping to educate our next generation

In collaboration with Siyavula, FHSST is aiming to finalise textbooks aligned with the new Curriculum and Policy Statements (CAPS) to be implemented from next year. Siyavula is a Shuttleworth Foundation seeded project that supports and encourages communities of teachers to work together, openly share their teaching resources and benefit from the use of technology.

Position
We are looking for a dynamic and enthusiastic person to join our small team for the remainder of 2011. Interested candidates should send a curriculum vitae and motivation letter to Mark Horner at <mark.horner@www.shuttleworthfoundation.org>, accompanying samples of authored content or assessment items would strongly support the application. We would like to fill this position as soon as possible and will begin interviewing candidates on the 1st of September 2011.

The successful candidate will be required to work in two areas:

Primary task: FHSST / FullMarks content authoring and editing
Working on our core products will require the candidate to:

• edit and author content for FET Mathematics;
• edit and author assessment items for FET Mathematics;
• be proficient in mathematics and information technologies;
• comfortable working on a word processor utilising mathematics and working online;
• be able to assess and review resources / tools and integrate them, as appropriate, into:

1. FHSST books, and
2. FullMarks;

• familiarity with LaTeX, PSTricks and XML will be advantageous.

Secondary task: Technical support of all activities
The candidate will be required to provide technical support at events and workshops showcasing the various products.In addition, the candidate needs to fit into the Siyavula team and the general working environment. This requires the candidate to:

1. be comfortable working in teams;

2. demonstrate a willingness to participate in group work, including:

• strategy discussions,
• brainstorming,
• product analysis;

3. be passionate about

• improving education both locally and globally, and
• the use of technology; and

4. embrace transparency and openness as a general operating procedure.

Basic day-to-day tasks require that the candidate have:

1. excellent writing skills;
2. a high-level of IT literacy;
3. excellent communication skills;
4. a high-level of independence and initiative; and
5. abundant enthusiasm.

Minimal formal requirements are a BSc. and teaching experience in FET Mathematics. A higher degree and education diploma would be extremely advantageous.

It would also be to the candidate’s advantage to:

1. be familiar with open-source software;
2. be familiar with Creative Commons licences;
3. have knowledge of, or familiarity with openly licensed educational resources; and
4. be familiar with social media tools.

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The day started at 09h00, with all the volunteers arriving promptly to begin translating. A large amount of preparation had been done beforehand, including emailing everyone their assignments and help sheets the night before. This meant that once people had registered their attendance on arrival, they could sit down at a computer, login and access their assignment from their email account, which most of them had already picked up and read through. We have learned from our UCT hackathons that the process runs more smoothly if on arrival everyone gets to work straight away, and we break later on for a brief introductory presentation. It means that those that arrived early aren’t kept waiting while we wait for late comers before we can begin – it sets the right tone from the start and makes for a more productive day.

We made progress charts for each book, which were projected onto the wall at the front of the lab so that everyone could see the progress being made in real time. We took photographs of each volunteer, which were included in the projection with their name and their progress. In order to keep the progress charts up to date, we were checking in with everyone on their progress throughout the day, and then updating the spreadsheet, which reflected this progress. We felt this would be a good motivator for those involved, as they would be able to see how they were going, relative to their peers’ progress. It also meant that come the end of the day, we would all have a good indication of where we stood with all the books.

It didn’t take long for our volunteers to be finishing the shorter chapters, which were then handed over to a volunteer for editing and publishing. With ongoing sustenance in the form of tea, coffee and muffins, followed by a delicious lunch of sandwiches and bagels, spirits were high as everyone worked hard to get through their assignment. Some people were able to move onto three, sometimes four chapters, while those with longer, meatier chapters stuck with one assignment for the day. Either way it was great to see the progress being made on the translation of our books.

The day was captured on video, and volunteers were interviewed to find out why they had wanted to be involved and how the day had gone for them. Overall the volunteers found the day to be very enjoyable, with many asking when the next Hackathon would be so that they could invite their friends! Our team loves such positive feedback – it’s great when others take such an interest in our project, which we ourselves are so passionate about.

At 5pm Mark closed with a brief talk about Siyavula and going forward, with a big thank you to everyone that attended. Everyone was invited to go through to the tearoom for drinks, which was followed by a delicious spitbraai for supper.

Overall the day was a great success and we are so grateful to everyone who volunteered their Saturday for our project. Following on from this day, the fact that we were able to submit Grade 10 maths is a fantastic achievement! We are half way to finishing Grade 10 physical science too, and with some progress on Grade 11 maths, we are well on our way to having the entire series translated into Afrikaans.

A very big thank you to Stellenbosch University and Thinus Booysen for hosting us, as well as to everyone that attended. We couldn’t have done it without you!

We look forward to our next big translation day on Saturday 30 July at Stellenbosch University! Please sing up for it by following this link: http://siyavula-afrikaanstranslation2.eventbrite.com/

We are also running a FullMarks development sprint on the same day and in the same venue. For more information and to sign up please click here: http://fullmarksdevsprint.eventbrite.com/

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Challenges

For a long time we’ve had a huge number of OERs available in South Africa but their impact has been limited. In fact, there are a huge number of OERs available globally which have had little impact. Considering the awesome benefits of OERs articulated, much more effectively than I ever will, in the Cape Town Open Education Declaration it is worth considering why this is the case.

Within the South African context (and this applies to the rest of this blog post), we find that there are few major factors at play that are not well addressed by the OER movement in South Africa.

Access Challenges: Very few educators have internet access (just over 10% of the population are internet users). This means that the digital, on-line nature of the vast majority of OERs excludes them from use by the majority of educators.

Official Credibility: Most schools are under-resourced and struggling, many considered dysfunctional. Schools that are struggling will have limited access to resources and when they are able to acquire resources, given that they typically serve poor areas, will only be able to purchase resources from the national catalogue of approved textbooks using their allocated textbook budget. There are no OER textbooks on the national catalogue so the resources that the majority of schools could get would not be open and so they would not benefit from the advantages of open resources.

Search: At this point we’re down to a very small set of educators from well resources schools that have internet access and some flexibility in what resources they might use. Do these educators use OERs? At this point I can’t point you at research but we’ll be posting a number of video interviews in the coming months to back up what I’m about to say. Most of the educators that do go online to search for resources:

• are not familiar with copyright licences at all so don’t know what they are actually allowed to use;
• are overwhelmed by the huge number of search results and don’t have the time to sift through them all;
• do not have the time to convert/adapt it to align with their curriculum; and
• give up because finding something you can use and adapting it to your class just takes too much effort!

Re-use and Remix: If they happen to push through to finding a resource they are confident they can use and they want to align it with their curriculum or integrate it into a lesson plan they find that the proprietary formats they encounter often mean they don’t have and can’t afford the tools to do this.

So the extremely small sample of educators that persevere all the way to the end often tell us that is just isn’t worth looking for resources on-line. For them it is faster and simpler to make their own resources from scratch!

We have found some educators all over South Africa using two sets of OERs:

1. The Free High School Science Texts (queue sigh of relief!) and
2. The PhET Simulations.

Fellowship Work

My Fellowship work in focused on Siyavula for 2011. There are some things that I do that are of a more general nature on the advocacy front but for the most part Siyavula is my Fellowship. I want to ensure that OERs become mainstream and that, that is done in a way that makes Siyavula sustainable.

A lot has been done on Siyavula this year:

• A mobile front-end was released for the Connexions platform. NOT an iPhone, Blackberry or Android application, but something relevant to the South African context. We used a theming proxy-server to give mobile users in South Africa the ability to consume all of the content on Connexions. All of the Siyavula content and FHSST textbooks are on Connexions so this is immediately available to any South African with access to a WAP-enabled phone – approximately 100% of South Africans.. There are multiple instances:
  1. a generic one hosted on Connexions hardware can be found at mobile.cnx.org for the rest of the world; and
  2. a Siyavula specific one hosted in Cape Town can be found at m.siyavula.cnx.org for the local market.

  One nice bonus to the mobile front-end is that it is actually used as a backend to the Connexions Android application.

• We ran a successful series of hackathons at the University of Cape Town (UCT). These allowed us to ensure that all exercises in our Grade 10 FHSST textbooks had model solutions on our open assessment bank, FullMarks.
• We ran three sets of evening events building on our success from last year. We ran events in:
  1. Durbanville for schools in the Northern suburbs of Cape Town;
  2. Pietermaritzburg and Durban; and
  3. Johannesburg.

  These events are subject-focused and cover tools/resources: for improved collaboration amongst educators; improved classroom engagement and extra-curricular engagement and learning. This is in addition to an introduction to openness in education and Siyavula as an organisation. We cover 5 subject areas in our series: Languages, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Information Technology/Computer Applications Technology (two subjects strictly speaking).

• We have used all our trips to run a number of FullMarks workshops for individual schools, groups of educators and computer centres all over South Africa. We are seeing a steady increase in the number of users of FullMarks and the number of assessment items. However, we are still far from the critical mass we require.
• We use each trip to engage with organisations that may be interested in our work or even partnering with Siyavula. We have had good meetings that have had meaningful follow-up discussions or activities with:
  • AdvTech who own the Crawford Schools and Abbotts Colleges in South Africa. We have been talking to their science coordinator specifically about extensions of our evening events into courses.
  • Mindset who are another OER producer in South Africa and have over 500 hours of video content. We have been discussing the remixing of their video content into our books, collaboration around FullMarks and the writing of further textbooks.
  • Tshikululu linked Mathematics educators from the 105 schools they support about strengthening their community of educators and the availability of resources.
  • OLE Rwanda about their use of FullMarks for supporting assessment. They have already remixed the Grade 4-6 English and Mathematics workbooks we’ve made available to be aligned with their curriculum.
• We have established a partnership with St Johns College in Johannesburg. Their Physical Science department has bought into the idea of openness and we have an uploading sprint scheduled for the 18^th and 19^th July during which we aim to help them put up a full set of Grade 10-12 Physical Science resources on Connexions. This is the first school that has bought into OERs at this level and it is a high-profile school with a very strong science department making this even more significant for the OER movement.
• We held an incredibly successful translation sprint at the Electrical Engineering Department at Stellenbosch University. The summary video of this event is in production right now and I will update this post as soon as it is available. We translated approximately 80% of Grade 10 Mathematics and 50% of Grade 10 Physical Science into Afrikaans. A follow-up sprint is scheduled for the 30^th of July.
• Siyavula is a registered member of the Publishers’ Association of South Africa and our paperwork to set up the Siyavula legal entity has been submitted and we are awaiting approval.
• We were able to submit Grade 10 Mathematics, Grade 10 Physical Science and, thanks to the incredible translation efforts of a number of volunteers, Graad 10 Wiskunde books for review for inclusion on the national catalogue of approved textbooks. This happened on the 21^st of June. Note that only Grade 1, 2, 3 and 10 were open for submissions at this time. The current submission date for Grade 11 and 12 is the 28^th February 2012.
• Not only did we submit books, we enriched them with OERs from a number of projects. In the process eating our own dogfood completely by developing them on Connexions, the platform we advocate teachers use. Our submitted books are a tour-guide to the highlights of world of online rich-media OERs, highlights in a very subjective, curriculum-aligned sense.
• We have also reworked the Siyavula brand and the new logo can be seen, as of today, on Siyavula.com. Our old logo made people think that we were more of a childrens’ literacy project than a technology-focused OER project. We’ve gone from:
  
  to:
  

Our Response to Challenges

Access Challenges: With our mobile front-end any educator or organisation can share resources on Connexions and ultimately make them available to 100% of South Africans. Our resources, developed on Connexions, are by default available to all. The print versions being on the approved list will also ensure that many more schools can actually acquire hard-copy OER textbooks that their educators can enhance on-line.

Official Credibility: Regardless of mobile accessibility, rich-media or open licensing, our books need to pass all the tests that publishers textbooks pass and so we have submitted them for approval. The ability to adapt them online, use them to point to rich-media and access them from almost anywhere in the country will make them the best option for educators once they are on the approved lists.

Search: Our textbooks and our evening events point to resources and tools that we have spent the time selecting from the multitude of options. This gives educators a simple, curriculum-aligned entry into the vast world of OERs.

Re-use and Remix: Our resources are available on Connexions, an open platform where educators can remix at will. In addition, we are working to get even more resources, like those from St Johns College, onto the platform to help educators nationally (and internationally).

Siyavula and Sustainability

We are in the process of setting Siyavula up as an OER “publisher”. We will add value to the work of our volunteers by providing the structure to ensure that their contributions add up to a coherent whole and by dealing with all the bureaucracy that needs to be navigated to ensure that their contributions have the maximum possible impact. Orders for books via the approved list would then carry a mark-up which would go to Siyavula’s running expenses but would still pass on the massive savings to the schools.

Each of our evening events is being developed into a course. All the resources and tools are freely available and we present them in the evening events but many educators have asked for a detailed course in which we help them use the tools. For these courses we will charge. Everything we use will be freely available but having us take the time to do the training will be a paid service.

Our books will always be available freely and openly on-line (web and mobile) and you will always be able to get a PDF file from Connexions but should you want us to deliver a printed copy or printed copies then we can do so and for that we will charge a mark-up. We will happily aggregate orders so that everyone benefits but Siyavula will take a percentage to cover our running expenses.

Conferences and Presentations

I also presented at the annual Connexions Conference and was invited to present on the OER panel at the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative’s Education Think Tank earlier this year.

I was also included in the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans for the education work we have been doing.

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Circumstances haven’t played along so I’m putting some thoughts down and, in the spirit of openness, I hope there will be some discussion and even better arguments forthcoming from the broader community.

In this blog I would like to answer the question: why should the very best schools share their resources?

First, My Conclusion

For a school to continue to compete to be the best it is essential that they participate openly in the global education movement. In fact, the top private/public schools can benefit more from the open educational resources movement than the under-resourced schools because they have strong educators with excellent content and pedagogical knowledge who have the resources and technology around which to innovate.

How do I get to this conclusion?

A Little Context

I happen to have a background in science so I’m going to have a significant bias towards mathematics and science examples. I promise to spend some time looking for the Arts equivalents but they’re out there I just haven’t filtered them effectively yet.

Now to the schools, normally, in South Africa, our team is faced with schools struggling for resources. For them the benefits of the OER movement, primarily openly shared resources, are quite straightforward:

• increased content availability (Connexions,Mindset, CK12, Curriki etc.);
• a multitude of formats print, online, PDF, ePub, and mobile are all available for the same book;
• content can be adapted, contextualised and enhanced (yes because these aren’t the typical audience for which resources are created);
• massive cost savings (~ 1/5 price of publisher’s alternatives) ; and
• a massive reduction in workload for educators.

In our recent travels we’ve also encountered some schools that are the best resourced in South Africa (probably Africa) and would do pretty well by any global metric. Hence, the need to answer the question addressed in this blog. These schools aren’t particularly swayed by:

• the fact that they’ll have a textbook as they already have many;
• the increased content as they can buy rich-media supplements, assessment banks etc.;
• the variety of formats as they can deliver whichever format suits them without accessibility concerns;
• the adaptability of someone else’s content as they typically use their own notes anyway as their departments are strong in content knowledge and pedagogy;
• the cost saving as, let’s face it, they can afford the most expensive premium content; and
• the massive reduction in workload as they are well managed and their departments already collaborate quite well.

So why should these perfectly functioning institutions participate in the OER movement (I’m being serious not sarcastic). Let me be very clear that this isn’t about one school we encountered, there are a few and they’re in very much the same boat.

Consider the School’s Mission

Firstly, any reason I give should be aligned with the schools’ mission statement. For reference here are a number of schools linked to their mission statement. There are two sets of schools listed: those government schools chosen by the Sunday Times in a recent study to be the best in the country and those ranked in a Serve Africa 2011 ranking. I don’t give any particular weight to these metrics, I just needed some way of showing a list of schools where I could blame the bias on someone else!

I won’t analyse these in detail but I challenge you to randomly pick a few and read them. None of these mission statements states a primary objective of getting their learners to pass a matric exam with 50% (or even the minimum which is, sadly, lower). These mission statements talk about providing the best education, supporting the development of responsible, well-rounded, individuals who can participate meaningfully and effectively in society and striving to ensure they fulfil their potential.

The World is Changing (Fast!)

The world is a rapidly changing place, for any school to be providing the best possible education the educators must be up to date. The rate of change has been accelerating because of the internet and rapid advances in technology. This is the world for which learners need to be prepared.

There are some concrete examples that show that society will be different in future just look at the recent events(1, 2) in the Arab world, look at how transparency and open governance are taking hold, how the movement for open data is getting stronger, how governments aren’t able to keep secrets in the same way, how municipalities are being more effective by opening up their data (1, 2) and allowing the public to provide innovative solutions and uses of the data.

My only point here is that the world that educators need to be preparing learners for is changing so rapidly that it absolutely dictates education evolve so you can’t possibly rely on what you did 5 years ago, the world has changed too much.

Openness in Science

Thanks to Francois Grey for a nice sketch of this content.
The increase in connections amongst people provided by the internet has led to many opportunities, most importantly an increase in participatory culture and openness with incredible results.

Grid computing, as it is now called, can best be explained by a famous project, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI@home). Volunteers download a simple computer program which analyses bits of radio data collected by a giant radio-telescope and sends back a short summary of the result to a central server in California. The biggest surprise of this project was not that they discovered a message from outer space. In fact, after over a decade of searching, no sign of extraterrestrial life has been found, although there are still vast regions of space that have not been looked at. The biggest surprise was the number of people willing to help such an endeavour. Over a million people have downloaded the software, making the total computing power of SETI@home rival that of even the biggest supercomputers in the world.

A software platform was built so that this model could be used to solve many other problems. You can read more about this platform, called BOINC, and the many different kinds of volunteer computing projects it supports today, at http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ . There’s something for everyone, from searching for new prime numbers (PrimeGrid) to simulating the future of the Earth’s climate (ClimatePrediction.net). One of the projects, MalariaControl.net, involved researchers from University of Cape Town as well as from universities in Mali and Senegal.

But in recent years, a new trend has emerged in citizen cyberscience that is best described as volunteer thinking. Here the computers are replaced by brains, connected via the Web through an interface called eyes. Because for some complex problems – especially those that involve recognizing complex patterns or three-dimensional objects – the human brain is still a lot quicker and more accurate than a computer.
Volunteer thinking projects come in many shapes and sizes. For example, you can help to classify millions of images of distant galaxies (GalaxyZoo), or digitize hand-written information associated with museum archive data of various plant species (Herbaria@home). This is laborious work, which if left to experts would take years or decades to complete. But thanks to the Web, it’s possible to distribute images so that hundreds of thousands of people can contribute to the search.

Not only is there strength in numbers, there is accuracy, too. Because by using a technique called validation it is possible to practically eliminate the effects of human error. This is true even though each volunteer may make quite a few mistakes. So projects like Planet Hunters have already helped astronomers pinpoint new planets circling distant stars. The game FoldIt invites people to compete in folding protein molecules via a simple mouse-driven interface. By finding the most likely way a protein will fold, volunteers can help understand illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease that depend on how proteins fold.

Volunteer thinking is exciting. But perhaps even more ambitious is the emerging idea of volunteer sensing: using your laptop or even your mobile phone to collect data – sounds, images, text you type in – from any point on the planet, helping scientists to create global networks of sensors that can pick up the first signs of an outbreak of a new disease (EpiCollect), or the initial tremors associated with an earthquake (QuakeCatcher.net), or the noise levels around a new airport (NoiseTube).

Open science is really taking off, just watch the video in this article to really open your eyes.

My point here is that if you happen to be a science educator and you don’t know about these opportunities then are you not only not up to date but you are missing incredible opportunities to expose your learners to real science and you are missing the opportunity to let them actually PARTICIPATE in real science – I can’t stress this enough, as an educator you must be using these tools to give your learners a real world perspective of how science is changing if your goal is the best possible education.

Open Educational Resources

There is an ever increasing community of educators sharing content openly, not just freely, but under copyright licences (written by Creative Commons, Free Software Foundation etc.) that let you use it, change it, distribute it and remix it.

In South Africa, Mindset has created a lot of content and I don’t think most people appreciate that it is under an open copyright licence. Add to all their content the fact that our little team at Siyavula has managed to write and edit 6 textbooks (9-12 Mathematics and Physical Science), rally volunteers around translating them plus we’ve made workbooks for all learning areas in R-9 (K-9) available in English and Afrikaans. I think there may be a greater percentage of the curriculum covered by open content in South Africa than anywhere else in the world.

Globally we’re seeing huge repositories of content become available like Wikipedia, YouTube and Slideshare which are more general tools but also more school specific ones like the Khan Academy videos, TeacherTube, Veritasium Science Videos, the PhET Simulations, CK12 Flexbooks, Curriki and of course Connexions.

So far all I’ve done is make a case for getting connected to the internet and consuming what is available!

Finally, Benefits of Sharing

The quality of this content is increasing all the time as well, especially in the cases where communities are forming. Consider the huge amount of content for Mathematics teaching Dan Meyer (algebra and geometry) has made available. The best part is that Dan releases many of his lessons on his blog where people discuss, debate and even improve them. I find the comments on Dan’s blog one of the most interesting mathematics teaching resources around (for educators at least). Consider this lesson idea posted by Dan and look at comments like this, this or even this. Thats just a random sampling. No, I’m not on a retainer from Dan, the reason I like to point at his stuff is because he made a nice 88s video explaining what it is all about for him – take a look here.

Is there only one Dan? Well yes, but there is more than one educator participating in a vibrant virtual community, sharing their content and benefiting from peer-review and an ever expanding community of practice. Not convinced, try following the any of the Blogroll links on Dan’s blog, if you’re a science educator start with Rhett Allain for some physics ideas and discussion. Each of those blogs will link to more blogs, browse around till you find the people you think are worth following.

Why is this happening? The answer is simple, peer-review in a real community works incredibly well!

But, to really benefit from a community of practice, to really harness that community to innovate around the challenges and context in which you work, you have to put your best material out there for them to see, to review and to improve and innovate around. You can’t passively watch their discussions and benefit from the full power of a community of practice. The best thing to do is to play a leading role in the community by participating and sharing on a large scale. Then the content you’re producing and the challenges you’re facing will benefit from the innovative power of the community.

You really need to be participating in a community of practice that is large and diverse enough to keep up with the rapid developments in all spheres of life so that you can provide the relevant education to your learners.

Keeping Ahead – Teaching vs. Content

Will you lose your edge? Absolutely not! In fact, this is the only way to keep your edge. Schools not participating in this process will be overtaken, firstly by the quality content that is becoming available and secondly by the rapidly changing environment for which they need to prepare learners.

The strong communities of educators have a much better chance of making sense of all the opportunities and changing technology and are too effective, too open and too innovative for the isolated schools to keep pace. Even if the schools buy the latest products from commercial publishers they’ll fall behind because of the slower pace at which publishers develop resources and the length of time they have to spend selling the content to cover their costs. Large, effective, open communities will beat them hands down.

Furthermore, I think the education you receive at one of those top schools is not defined by the content on the desk and neither is the teacher who puts it there. Those teachers identify and empathize with their students, guide them to make sense of the vast world of content, not just by acting as filters but by harnessing critical thinking and discourse. Those teachers need to fine tune, adapt and contextualise the learning experience for the needs of their specific learners. That is what will make them great educators and no matter how much content and how many ideas their community comes up with, the person who needs to take it the “last mile” is still the in-classroom educator.

A Couple of Additional Benefits

Firstly, there are, in our context, many schools where better content would still make a remarkable difference. By sharing quality resources openly, learners at those schools have opportunities to access better resources. They will never have the experience of going to a top school but everyone in the world benefits when more people have a better schooling. Doing anything to raise the bar for everyone is a worthwhile exercise.

Secondly, sharing quality resources actually increases the profile of a school. It certainly didn’t undermine MIT‘s reputation when they put up hundreds of their lectures for free online in their OpenCourseWare project.

Conclusion (Again!)

If you want to be the best you need to be up to date on all fronts and I believe that it is impossible to remain at the forefront of education if you remain in a silo, you just won’t be able to keep up.

Maybe we should be doing things radically differently anyway, if you’re bored or not at all convinced then try watching Sir Ken Robinson’s two TED talks, Do Schools Kill Creativity and Bring on the Learning Revolution.

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We touched down to a bright and sunny but very chilly Johannesburg on Tuesday 24 May, and on collection of our cars our team split into three groups and headed off to various meetings. Neels and Carine met with SAASTA‘s science awareness division, where they will be organising for us to present our resources to teachers in Gauteng. Mark had a follow up meeting with Joy Rosario at the Department of Basic Education in Pretoria, and Natalia and I went to meet with a representative from RMB who is wanting to set up a foundation for technology in education, with the focus being on pre-primary and primary school children and after hours fun education. We all met up at our BnB in Craighall (Craighall House) where we were shown to our rooms, and then headed out for a quick lunch before going to St David’s for teacher training on FullMarks and to get set up for our first evening event.

On arrival at St David’s we were met by Nicci who is the HOD of physical sciences, and who has played a huge role in organising for St David’s to host us for our three evening functions, as well as help set up teacher interviews. After being shown the auditorium and classroom for our first night of presentations, Mark and Natalia facilitated the teacher training, Neels made final preparations for his life sciences presentation, and Carine and I headed out to finalise our handouts and buy refreshments for the coming evenings.

By 18h00 we had our first arrivals for our presentations, which that evening were on life sciences and languages. The St David’s chef provided us with lovely warm finger foods for our guests. Everyone huddled inside and enjoyed the snacks, and chatted amongst themselves and to our team. We had 11 teachers present for languages, and 14 for life sciences. Mark began with a combined presentation in the auditorium, where he explained what Siyavula is all about, and what openness and sharing means to us. Neels then took the life sciences teachers next door for his presentation, and the languages teachers stayed in the auditorium for Mark’s talk. Both talks went very well, followed by much conversation afterwards as teachers asked the team for more information.

Wednesday morning saw Carine and Mark meet with the Marang Centre for Mathematics and Science Education at WITS Education. They had never heard of Siyavula before but were excited by what we do. As part of a course they offer, they will ask their students next year to critically analyse and review the content and exercises in FHSST, which will help us improve our books. They would also like to start a workgroup on FullMarks where they will share assessment items. Neels, Natalia and I stayed at the BnB working online, where we stayed cosy next to the gas fire in the lounge. We all met up for a quick lunch at Rosebank Mall, after which Mark and Carine met up with the Learning Channel. Neels, Natalia and I headed back to the BnB to work, as well as make final preparations for that night’s function. We all met up again at the school for our maths and physical science evening, where we were expecting a large turnout.

Prior to this evening’s presentation, we organised with Nicci and the school to interview her about how she is using technology in her teaching. On our trips to KZN and Johannesburg (and this will continue in Cape Town), we have approached teachers who we know are incorporating technology into their teaching, and asked if we could interview them and where possible film them using the technology in class. We would like to make these case studies available online, which will show how technology can be used effectively in teaching, while showing teachers’ experience around using the various tools available, and how they have adapted their lessons and approach to teaching since using technology. We would love to interview others, so if you (or if you know of an innovative teacher) would like to be interviewed, please let us know! Nicci was happy for us to interview her, and shared with us her experience of using technology in class.

Our maths and physical science evening saw a turnout of 56 teachers, which is a record attendance for us. Once snacks and drinks had been enjoyed by everyone Mark began his presentation which again began with and introduction to Siyavula, openness and community and sharing. This was followed by specific maths and science resources that are available online, such as the Khan Academy, PhET Simulations, and many more. Mark also showed a video of Vi Hart who has some fun maths doodles on her blog, and as everyone was keen to stay on he ended with Sir Ken Robinson’s RSA Animate talk on changing education paradigms. The evening was very successful with Mark receiving a vigorous round of applause, and teachers staying on to ask Mark’s advice, which resulted in us all staying on at least an hour after the presentation had ended!

On the Thursday morning Neels, Mark and Carine headed off to meet with Mindset, and we are now looking into a possible collaboration with them. They have an assessment bank of 20 000 questions which we can pull into FullMarks, which will really bulk up our assessment bank. Natalia and I went to St David’s, where we had organised to film the geography and one of their maths teachers teaching in class with technology. It was very interesting to see how they incorporate it into their lessons, with the geography teacher using only technology to teach, and the maths teacher incorporating both a SMART Board and traditional workbooks in her lesson. This was followed by another quick lunch, and Carine and I then left for SSB, a small private school in Randburg, where we filmed a maths teacher using technology, followed by a one on one interview with her. Here we saw the teacher allowing learners to come up and play with the programme she was teaching with, giving them a chance to experiment and interact with the various tools. We all then met up at St David’s that evening for our final presentation, which was on IT and technology integration.

Our evening function was again well attended, with a total of 21 people arriving. Mark presented the introduction, and Neels took over to present on tools that teachers can use. Neels gave a fantastic talk where he spoke from experience about using the various tools, and many resources that exist online for free. This talk was also well received, and resulted in a meeting being set up for the following morning with St John’s College. The Siyavula team then went out for a well deserved team dinner (at that stage it was almost 10pm and many restaurants’ kitchens had already closed!), where we discussed the happenings over the last few days and how everyone felt about the trip.

The team’s last morning in Johannesburg started early for Mark and Neels, as they headed off for their meeting at St John’s. This was a productive meeting which will hopefully result in another visit to Johannesburg to facilitate the compilation of their own physical science textbook on Connexions. Mark and Neels returned just in time to collect Natalia and head off to the airport, and see Carine and I before we returned to St David’s to film one on one interviews with the geography and maths teachers, and then film Nicci teaching with technology in her science class. These interviews went really well, and we were able to gain insight into how and why technology is brought into lessons and what the teachers have discovered in terms of best practice.

Overall it was a great trip to Johannesburg, with Siyavula being very well received by teachers and schools, and us gaining some great insight into technology integration in the classroom. We are now in the final stages of preparing our CAPS aligned maths and physical science textbooks for the submission for the government approved textbook list! Bring on June (acy)!

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After a safe arrival in Durban at King Shaka International, we picked up our hire cars and the team split into three groups. That afternoon Mark and Natalia had a meeting at Treverton College, where they met with the HOD for science, who was very interested in our textbooks as well as the online content that is available. They currently use PhET Simulations on their SMART Boards, which was great to hear. He had some suggestions for us to further spread the word about ourselves and OERs, and suggested that Siyavula present at the IEB Science Conference in early 2012. Neels and Carine met with the national science coordinator for the ADvTECH Group, who was very excited about FHSST serving as a tour guide to the online tools and resources available online for free, which are embedded in our books. FullMarks was also very well received as it is exactly what teachers have been asking for, especially with the select and drag functionality of creating tests, along with it being a central website where teachers can share content. Ewald, Heather and I headed to Pietermaritzburg to check in at our BnB and make final arrangements for the evening’s talk at Maritzburg Christian School (MCS). I met up with Grant Hillebrand at MCS, who is a proud user of FHSST and was our main contact in Pietermaritzburg and a huge help in organising our evening events which MCS hosted.

We all had very busy afternoons, but by 18h00 the team was at MCS, all set up and ready for the evening ahead. We had lovely finger foods set out, and a selection of drinks at the ready for when our first teachers arrived. That evening the talks covered life sciences and languages, with a combined introduction at the beginning, presented by Mark. The teachers then split into their two groups, with Neels taking the life sciences teachers to the lab for his talk, and Mark staying in the hall with the language teachers. We had 11 teachers in attendance who found the evening very insightful and enjoyable.

Wednesday morning dawned bright and early, with the team splitting up to visit various schools. Mark, Ewald and Heather went to Maritzburg Muslim School for Girls for teacher training, where Mark presented on Siyavula, FullMarks and other free online resources. One teacher in particular was not interested in incorporating technology into his teaching, but it didn’t take long for him to start looking at various videos on the Khan Academy (we think we may have converted him). We also heard a story of a teacher there who was prepared to buy a projector herself, but the school bought one for her after all, and she now projects her lessons onto a white sheet she has hanging in her classroom. Neels and Natalia went to St Mary’s Diocesan School for Girls, where they met with various teachers from the school. They are already using FHSST, Khan Academy, Phet Simulations, and MIT OpenCourseWare which is fantastic. They would also like to start using FullMarks at their school, as they currently only use Moodle as a resource sharing tool.

Carine and I returned to MCS where we interviewed Grant on his use of FHSST and technology in the classroom. After his interview we went into his science lab to film him and see his use of FHSST in action, and it was amazing to see how he teaches with it projected on a screen and using Foxit in order to draw over diagrams or emphasise points. After that we did a team swap: Mark returned Ewald and Heather to the BnB, and left with Carine for a meeting at Durban Girls College, where they met with the IT and academic head. They were very interested in our resources and our approach to technology integration and open source software. Ideally they would like FHSST to cover all subjects, not just maths and science. This meeting was followed by a presentation and FullMarks workshop at the school, where more than 25 teachers from surrounding schools attended. I returned to MCS where I interviewed Henry Perez, a Grade 8 – 11 maths teacher, on his use of FHSST in the classroom, followed a bit later by an interview with Hlengiwe Nguse, another maths teacher at the school who teaches Grades 9, 10 and 12. The interviews offered much insight into how FHSST is used and what teachers appreciate about this open educational resource.

Our Wednesday evening event was on open resources and technology in maths and physical science, which had a good attendance of 20 teachers. Mark covered the resources that are great to incorporate into the maths and science classrooms, and many teachers were very impressed with FHSST and the rich-media we have embedded in the books. It is fantastic for us to receive such great feedback and to share in the excitement of teachers as they discover what Siyavula is all about.

Thursday was off to another early start, with Neels and Natalia heading off to Hilton College, where they met with the HOD of science and the HOD of maths. They are already using PhET Simulations and Khan Academy content, and want to do away with printed textbooks and rather have the learners using iPads or laptops in the classroom. Carine and Mark headed off to St John’s Diocesan School for Girls, where they met with a science and maths teacher who is unhappy with many of the textbooks on the market, and who has gone so far as to write to the publishers with a list of mistakes she has found in them, but to no avail. With our policy of openness, we encourage people to submit comments on FHSST, and we can easily make any changes to the textbooks and update them regularly.

Mark, Ewald, Heather and I then went to KwaMashu for a teacher training workshop on free online resources, as well as on using FullMarks. This workshop was at the KwaMashu Teachers’ Centre and Altech Multimedia Centre, which has a new and well equipped computer lab, with 50 internet enabled computers. Jen and Kogis (our Durban team who we call on when we give workshops in KZN) met us there to assist with the workshop. Teacher attendance was fairly low – 63 teachers had expressed interest but only 18 attended. Those that did come (and stay until the end!) managed to set their own tests on FullMarks, which was great. We also helped 6 of the teachers set up their own email addresses, and even show some of them how to access their email via their cell phones!

That afternoon Neels met up with a representative from SADTU, who is very excited about FHSST and the mobile front end for Connexions. Carine and Natalia headed to Durban that afternoon for a meeting at Clifton School with the HODs of science, maths, IT and life sciences. This meeting revealed some interesting opinions on sharing content, as so many questions are shared and recycled amongst teachers, it is difficult to know who the question originally belonged to, so teachers are hesitant to claim a question they put on FullMarks as their own due to this issue. They feel that an anonymous question bank, or one with the option of not making public who the author is, would be better, rather than showing the author of every question. They were excited about the various resources they were shown, and interest was expressed in assisting with being involved in writing the IT textbook.

After all our busy afternoons, each team raced back to Pietermaritzburg for our final evening event. Thursday night’s talk was on IT and technology integration. We had 11 attendees, which were a mix of network admin, technical managers and teachers. After the usual drinks and snacks we ushered them into the computer lab for the talk. During Neels’ presentation there was much discussion and sharing of ideas, and many of those present had strong opinions about certain tools and the subject as a whole.

Friday morning saw Mark, Neels and Carine heading to Durban at the crack of dawn to catch their flight to Johannesburg for more meetings as well as a presentation for Tshikululu schools, while the rest of the team caught up on some work at the BnB before heading to Durban for our flight back to Cape Town.

Overall it was a very successful trip, which aside from all of us racing from meeting to meeting without a break to catch our breath, it involved making many good contacts and our content was very well received. We are excited at the leads we have, the follow ups we will do, and what they will mean for Siyavula and OERs in South Africa.

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