You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June, 2008.
May 2008 was a really great month at the Foundation. We went through what seemed like a spring clean of our thoughts, processes and communications.
We spent some time going into the next phase of our theory of change and, helped by our trusty designer Eugene, have started to make real progress on how we express what we do and why. We also went through the website, and whilst all are agree that we we need a thorough re-design, to help include all the information, developments and achievements of our partners and projects, we identified some low-hanging fruit to pick.
Most excitingly, we released the first of our ‘How we work’ papers, specifically looking at how we use/protect freedoms and try to ensure our money is spent in a enduring manner through licensing. We are no where close to perfect, but we are trying to get there!
In our last quarterly trustee meeting, we had a debate about results and timing. A lot of our work does not have the satisfying feeling of tangible results. When you build a school, you see the foundations, the bricks, the fixtures and fittings and eventually, the learning that happens inside. When building the foundations for an open knowledge society, driving innovation in education and technology, the results are not always as obvious.
This month I was incredibly heartened to see some of our labour bear fruit. Due to the diligent work by Karien and Andrew, we have been part of a process of South Africa standing up for what it believes in and appealing against the ISO in the OOXML debate. We also saw UNESCO state publicly that the Cape Town Declaration Open Education was a milestone and significant contribution to OER’s.
Whilst none of these have a PR photo opportunity, I believe the placement of these foundations can and will (and in some cases already do) have a significant impact on society and people’s ability to participate in the knowledge economy.
Having Mark Surman in Cape Town from his usual Toronto haunt, always adds an extra sense of silliness and productivity. As both Mark and I are not permanently based in the office, we very proudly left our Mini-me bobble heads for the team to find on Monday morning. They have a recording device, if you want to know what we are saying, you will have to drop in!
We continued working towards democratisation of the telecommunication infrastructure by defining and organising the key players and stakeholders in the Village Telco initiative together. We will have a workshop next month and have commitment from all to participate fully. This will be the first time they have all been together and we are very much looking forward to shaping the project further.
Connected Cities
Steve Song met with Leon Van Wyk, head of Telecommunications Department for the City of Cape Town and was hugely impressed with the progress, stating:
Cape Town is poised to become the leading city on the continent in terms of high speed information infrastructure. Let’s hope many others follow their model.
This was also his first (of many) post featured on Techleader.co.za.
During the last quarterly review with the Trustees, Mark expressed his wish to help find some real, concrete and effective changes that he could propose in the Presidential International Advisory Council (PIAC). Consulted widely, Steve has met with Tracey Cohen (ICASA Councillor) and Paris Mashile (Chair of ICASA) amongst others to validate ideas for policy change . We have some exciting ideas and the draft is being internally reviewed by the trustees before being proposed in the official forum. Once the proposal parameters have been defined we will open it up for review.
Steve and Jason gave a talk about the Village Telco and Freedom Toaster at the Bandwidth Barn , organised by CITI, attended by entrepreneurs, government representatives (local and national), and VeloCITI participants .
New blog postings
As part of the Foundation’s research into how games and learning can support the development of communication and analytical thinking skills, Steve Vosloo is writing a paper on games and learning. The paper, which draws on emergent research about digital games-based learning will consider the benefits, barriers and potential opportunities that games present for education. It will be completed in next month. We are also hosting a half-day indaba on 14 August. The indaba will bring together researchers, game designers and developers, and educators from SA. Steve blogged on Tech Leader about Grand Theft Auto IV, the recently launched and highest grossing game of all time. The post considers what such violent, yet totally compelling and engaging games, mean for the games and learning debate.
As part of the preparation for implementing the Teachable Agents (TA) project, Steve met with Wordwise, educators and curriculum advisers to decide on the content to be used with the participating grade 6 learners. Wordwise, with the educators, have subsequently worked out the lessons plans and the concepts in natural science for the TA concept maps. The educators that we have contacted so far are very helpful and excited about the project. One potential risk is the actual implementation of the Betty’s Brain TA software at the schools. We still need to work this out with the researchers at Stanford University.
Steve presented at the eLearning Africa 2008 conference in Accra, Ghana, on Digital storytelling for Africa: Case study of an international digital media project. About 1,500 delegates – mostly from Africa – attended the conference to share and discuss ICTs in education. Notes from the interesting sessions and projects from across the continent are on Steve’s blog.
Steve also attended the tabling of the Education Budget in parliament, as presented by Education Minister Naledi Pandor and others. His blog lists highlights from this session.
During a meeting with Cally Khune of UCT’s Schools Development Unit, the possibility of a Shuttleworth Foundation indaba on Foundation Phase Literacy and Numeracy was discussed. Apparently while this is a hot topic in the media, not enough has been done to improve education at that level; most government interventions are still focussed on the FET Phase. Cally also pointed out the importance of early childhood development (ECD) as learning that happens then feeds into the Foundation Phase literacy and numeracy efforts. We will continue to discuss the possibility of hosting such an indaba.
Finally, a poster submission to the Games, Learning and Society conference, to be held in the USA in July, was accepted. Steve will present the poster at the conference, on behalf of Dylan Busa and Kirston Greenop of Mindset. The poster titled Guerilla Learning: Developing games for mobile phones in South Africa is about the Maths/Mobile for Girls project.
During May, emphasis in the Kusasa project has been on evaluating, finalising the technical approach for deploying Kusasa and establishing a review group to critique new materials.
Much of the evaluation work is iterative and systematic. With the additional strategic clarity achieved at the April trustees meeting, we are now able to establish what the indicators are we should be assessing.
While we are still in the process of establishing exactly how we will assess the impact of Kusasa, we are starting to receive promising feedback on our implementation approach from stakeholders.
Effort continues to be expended on refining the implementation solution with VMware continuing to prove useful. All deployment scenarios will be based on the same virtual machine to minimise the technical effort and expertise required.
A review group has been constituted to review both approach and new material to be developed for grade 7. The main purpose reviewing the approach and material early is to be able to check that the underlying logic and pedagogy is sound. Questions being posed are:
- What are the intentions of the item under review?
- What concepts and skills are targeted?
- Are there conceptual relationships between this and other material already developed or in the pipeline? Are there any prerequisites to achieving success here?
- What is the pedagogical approach and what is the justification for using this approach?
- What are the alternative approaches to this chosen approach?
- Are there any other pitfalls to using this approach?
On 22 May 2008 the South African Bureau of Standards appealed the process by which the International Standards Organisation adopted OOXML. Andrew Ren blogs on it here and in the news here. The participation of the Foundation in the local OOXML process, and consequent media campaign had already profiled the Foundation in the media to speak on the appeal.
Once SABS had sent the letter the Foundation was able to both voice its support for the appeal and to place the appeal in context for the press.
Andrew Rens was also interviewed by journalists from three separate publications (ITWEB, Tectonic, Financial Mail). He explained that the reasons for the appeal lay in the flawed processes adopted in the fast tracking of OOXML. Andrew was able to point to the Microsoft announcement highlighting that it will not be compliant with OOXML until an unspecified date in the future but will support ODF from 2009 to suggest that coupled with the appeal, it would be best if OOXML be withdrawn. News of the appeal spread quickly around the world and Brazil, India and Denmark followed South Africa’s lead and also appealed.
From 27-28 May we participated in a workshop on alternative publishing models, held under the auspices of the National Book Trust of Uganda. The workshop was part of the PALM Africa project and we were able to provide training, and consult with participants on the strategic use of Creative Commons licensed material in emerging business models.
We attended eLearning Africa in Accra, Ghana. The event creates a space for those interested in, working on or touched by ICT for development, specifically in Africa, to come together and share ideas, experiences and resources.
The first public presentation of Siyavula took place here and was featured in the eLearning Africa newsletter. The project was well received and a number of partners were identified, specifically some award-winning South African teachers who were very supportive and keen to get involved.
Our engagement with other initiatives prompted us to ask who should make OERs and think more about the context in which these OERs are created.
We were happy to hear a number of our projects mentioned by independent presenters as key initiatives in the OER and Open Access space, including OpeningScholarship and Rip-Mix-Learn. We are pleased that news about these initiatives are virally making their way through this space and we look forward to making the formal results available as the initial phases come to and end in July.
While in Accra we also participated in the University of Michigan OER Health Workshop. It was very interesting to be in a room with academics from across the world who had on the one hand immense experience in developing and disseminating OERs and open course ware (OCW), and on the other hand is just starting to explore this area. It was great to see how experiences and learning and visions were shared. We’re looking forward to the next stage of firming up next steps for collaboration.
An opinion piece co-written by Mark Horner, Siyavula project manager and FHSST founder, was published in Physics World, the official magazine of the Institute of Physics. The initiative gained the interest of the Physics community as it was started by a group of Physicist in training and initially focused on Natural Sciences. The article has already triggered a number of very positive responses, varying from people wishing the project well to others volunteering to help. The idea clearly resonates with academics and scientists alike.
