Communication and Analytical Skills Development

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?