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The Teachable Agents (TA) project is under way. In June two training sessions were held with natural science teachers as well as computer lab teachers from all of the participating schools. The teachers learned how to create concept maps using the Betty’s Brain TA software. The software has also been implemented at all of the schools.
Steve presented at the 3rd International Conference on eLearning 2008 conference in Cape Town on Kusasa: Developing analytical thinking skills. About 130 delegates from 20 countries attended the conference to share and discuss e-learning at school and tertiary education levels. The Kusasa presentation was well received. Two papers of particular interest to us: Developing Critically Thoughtful, Media-Rich Lessons in Science by Philip Balcaen of the University of British Columbia, Canada, and Technology-Assisted Reading for Improving Reading Skills for young South African Learners by Gerda van Wyk and Arno Louw, both from the University of Johannesburg.
Steve is currently overseas presenting at the ED-MEDIA 2008 (Austria) and Games, Learning and Society 2008 (USA) conferences.
On the Kusasa project we have seen a shift in emphasis from development of materials toward implementation. Much of the work during June has focussed on dealing with site-specific technical and organizational issues and on incorporating these learnings into our system approach.
The evaluation approach seeks to mirror the approach of Kusasa and correspondingly is developmental, iterative and continuous. Feedback is provided to, in the first instance, the Kusasa project team and to educators. Already this kind of feedback is proving valuable and has led to changes in the pacing and structure of the implementation design.
Technical efforts have focussed on understanding Edubuntu deployment scenarios and on improvements to the VMware virtual machine that we use for project deployment. The review group constituted to review new development work is now up and running and the first of these reviews has taken place. The material under review has been published on the project wiki.
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?
What we do in this area:
“The Shuttleworth Foundation is involved in research into the idea that the two core skills acquired by learners at school are communications and analysis. As such, the transfer of these skills should be prioritised – especially in the African context where resources are often scarce and fundamental skills require specific focus.”
This month’s highlights:
Steve Vosloo has been researching mother-tongue education and will produce a paper on this topic in early April. This will be the first in a series of papers exploring key issues relevant to the this area of investment. The mother-tongue education research has involved conducting a literature survey as well as interviewing important stakeholders such as Professor Zubeida Desai (UWC), Professor Neville Alexander (UCT) and Anne Schlebusch, who headed up the Language Transformation Plan at the WCED. Really looking forward to reading it!
The next paper will be on literacy and numeracy, especially in the Foundation Phase (FP) of school. It will ask questions such as: What are they key related issues? How are they being addressed? What potential opportunities exist for the Shuttleworth Foundation to support the improvement of literacy and numeracy? To begin the research, Steve has met with the WCED team driving the 2006-16 Literacy and Numeracy Strategy for the Western Cape.
After some rounds of feedback and refinement, we have agreed upon process with Wordwise to implement a Teachable Agents (TA) pilot at 6 schools. We are currently engaging both Wordwise and the team at Stanford University behind the TA software, in order to work out a realistic plan and timeline for the project. Wordwise proposes 2 rounds to the research, the first being educator-focused (What do they think of the TAs?) and the second being learner-focused (Their perceptions? Any grade improvements? Etc.).
A UCT student doing a Masters in Media Theory and Practice has begun a 6-week research internship at the Foundation, supervised by Steve. He will produce a short paper on the potential for mobile learning among high school students in grades 10 to 12 in the Philippi township in Cape Town.
Steve comments on a how to stem the Matthew Effect in education. The “Matthew Effect” denotes processes whereby inequality is created or maintained. He also blogged his notes on the Integrated Education Program (IEP) Conference, touching of the subjects of how to improve the quality of primary education by supporting programmes in teacher education, as well as school management and governance.
What we do in this area:
“The Shuttleworth Foundation is involved in research into the idea that the two core skills acquired by learners at school are communications and analysis. As such, the transfer of these skills should be prioritised – especially in the African context where resources are often scarce and fundamental skills require specific focus.”
This month’s highlights:
The AAA Lab at Stanford’s School of Education has created an artificially intelligent, interactive software package called Teachable Agents (TAs). Learners learn science and maths by teaching a TA through well-structured visual representations that help to shape and organize their thinking. A growing empirical base that supports the truism that people “really learn” when they teach someone else; TAs are premised on this. We are looking into the feasability of implementing it in South Africa with Wordwise and believe it could have a great impact.
Steve Vosloo (Communication and Analytical Skills Fellow) has had 2 papers accepted to education conferences this month.
Digital Storytelling for Africa: Case Study of an International Digital Media Project for eLearning Africa (May, Ghana)
Kusasa: Humanising eLearning using Illustrated Characters (co-authored with Barry Kayton) for ED-MEDIA (July, Austria)
Steve Vosloo attended the Integrated Education Programme (IEP) conference, at which the preliminary results of a four-year project to improve learner performance in numeracy, literacy, maths and science in four of the poorest provinces were announced. He blogged about his thoughts and findings. A buzz pharase that is circulating in education circles in South Africa is the “Mathew Effect”. Taking its name from the book of Matthew, and highlighting how those with, get more, those without, increasingly get less.
A review of the Kusasa teacher’s material for grade 4 was conducted by the Western Cape Education Department. This material was positively received. The quarterly trustee meeting gave us an opportunity to provide feedback to Mark Shuttleworth on the progress of the project. What was apparent is that the project in its current state does not align with all of Marks objectives. The project team is in the process of finalizing a response plan to address this and develop options.
The project evaluation is now taking place. We are in the early stages of developing the frameworks for conducting an outcomes mapping exercise and also for case studies of both schools and learners.
The LAMS Foundation has released to Kusasa a build of Ubuntu Server optimized for VMWare with LAMS pre-installed and configured for deployment. This is currently under test and will be deployed into Grove Primary shortly.
Groote Schuur Primary School has been added to the implementation shortlist. These schools are being assessed with a view to rolling out existing grade 4 content as scheduled in the 2nd term.
We have initiated a project called Plus Time with the HSRC and the WCED. It aims to test whether simply increasing the amount of time spent on acquiring communication and analytical skills will have a positive effect on all subjects at school.
We held 2 workshops in February to share the preliminary findings of the study. Tutors, material developers, delegates and principals from the participating schools, academics at higher education institutes and senior officials from the district office, the WCED and DoE Curriculum and Research Directorates attended the workshops.
The aim of the workshop was to share the research data, as well as its analysis and findings with the stakeholders. Participants were also exposed to the rationale behind decisions on issues such as the need for the research, the research design and the criteria for the selection of project schools.
Dr Cas Prinsloo of the HSRC reported extensively on all the aforementioned aspects. He did however make it clear that it was a draft report and that the final report would become available at a later date.
It was hoped that after the conferences, the participants and the WCED would have greater clarity around the research findings and its implications for policy and strategic initiatives in education at large and for Mathematics and English Language Education in particular.
Some of the more interesting findings and contextual variables:
- The better learners’ attendance at the English tutorial sessions had been, the higher their Mathematics post-test scores were.
- Reading newspapers more frequently was only associated with higher performance improvement scores in Mathematics for high-attendance learners. Reading magazines more frequently, on the other hand, was only associated with higher performance improvement scores in English.
- Facilities at home: for Maths, satellite TV appears detrimental, but PCs not. For English, both appear conducive.
We are currently studying the final report, and will be meeting with the WCED to present recommendations and to plot a way forward. The findings were inconsistent, and the effects smaller than expected on the whole.
