Preparation

In the lead up to the life sciences weekend, much planning and preparation was undertaken by the Siyavula team, namely Mark Horner, Neels van der Westhuizen, Carine Grobbelaar, Bridget Nash, Natalia Kavalenia, Carl Scheffler, Heather Williams, Megan Beckett and Helene Smit our facilitator. Megan, who is a Masters student at UCT in molecular and cellular biology, joined our team and has played a huge role in preparing for the life sciences textbook undertaking. Megan gave a lot of time to preparing the curriculum framework from the latest life sciences CAPS document, where she pulled in rich-media to align the proposed textbook with Siyavula’s current maths and physical science WebBooks. She also produced a style-guideline which laid out how each chapter could be constructed and what should be considered as necessary content.

In addition to meetings with Helene who facilitated the weekend, we had numerous team discussions and planning meetings. This was to ensure that all bases were covered and as much preparation for the weekend was done beforehand, in order to make the weekend as successful and stress free and possible. We hosted three evening events at our office in Cape Town, which served as information sessions for interested people to attend, and find out more about Siyavula and how we were planning to produce a textbook in one weekend. We also produced a Q and A blog about the collaboration process, as well as a process diagram which we hoped would really reflect how the textbook would be produced, and answer any questions that people may have had about the weekend.

We also produced paper prototypes of the book. What this means is that we produced a paper version of the outline of the book, a framework if you will, of what each unit of each chapter would look like. Following the curriculum statement, our book would end up with four chapters made up of ten units in total. These units made up the basis of the book, and each of these units needed to be paper prototyped. We assigned one large piece of cardboard to each unit, and then following the curriculum we mapped out the sub-headings and the kind of content that was either compulsory for inclusion, was optional, and then what could be included (the range of options included pictures, diagrams, indigenous knowledge systems, worksheets, exercises, class discussions, rich-media and so on). These would be used once we had the whole group together, and the educators that were present would be able to indicate what content they had that could be used where.

Numerous emails about the life sciences weekend were sent out to the life sciences educators in our database from across the country, to draw as many educators as possible into the project. We made announcements on our social networking pages such as Facebook and Twitter, and encouraged everyone to spread the word on our behalf. We made a life sciences Dropbox account, and encouraged everyone that had content that they wanted to contribute to add it in so that we could sort it in advance, in order to have content available to be used for the weekend (this was also a way for those that couldn’t attend the weekend to still be involved in the project). We also made a Google Doc available for people to sign up to a particular unit in advance, so that if they wanted to come more prepared they could. However, we could not guaranteed each person their unit to work on, as we wanted to see how the group dynamics would play out before assigning people to their smaller groups.

We felt it was very important to have educators from outside of Cape Town present and involved in the textbook collaboration, and so we invited educators from across the country to join us in Cape Town for the weekend. After consultation with Mindset Learn who we are in collaboration with, they made funds available to sponsor the flights and accommodation of one Johannesburg life sciences educator. In addition to this, Mark was able to secure funding to sponsor two more educators to join us – one more from Johannesburg, and one from Durban. This was excellent for our collaboration, as it meant that the project was not restricted to involvement by those in the Western Cape, and which we hope will mean that educators from across the country will more readily accept this as a resource in their own classrooms, knowing that it was an effort of South African educators, and not just those from Cape Town.

Helene invited two guests to join us for the weekend – Dominique le Roux, a publisher who could provide layout guidance as well as knowledge on copyright; and Thapelo Mahlangu who is a management development consultant who helped with indigenous knowledge.

Friday

After much anticipation and planning, Friday afternoon finally arrived! Carine had a busy morning fetching our educators from the airport, and having them check in at their BnB. The rest of us were busy at the office involved in the final preparations – Helene, Mark and Megan had a final check in for the process for the afternoon, while the rest of the team moved furniture around, finished off name tags, set up the kitchen for tea and so on. Before we knew it the office door bell was ringing, and our volunteers were arriving!

We kicked off the afternoon with an introduction by Helene, where everyone was given a chance to introduce themselves to the group and why they volunteered to be involved in this project. Helene then went on to clarify the weekend activities and what would take place in order to produce the book. She briefly laid out how we would work together, how we would identify gaps in the content, how content would be found and collated; and how everything would be uploaded, reviewed and feedback given. It was also important to make everyone aware of what still needed to be decided on, such as use of language and general styling.

Helene then went on to discuss the psychology behind group work. This was very important and why we felt it necessary to have a facilitator on board: with a group of 23 people from different backgrounds with different levels and areas of expertise, there is bound to be conflict on some level during the weekend. It is necessary to address possible issues upfront, and make everyone aware and respectful of what each member of the group is bringing to the table, as well as issues of rank. By making the group aware of how they address each other – the tone that is used, not to be condescending towards each other as each person is an expert in their own right; that everyone has an “edge” – their own personal limit, the end of their comfort zone – one hopes that everyone will be more tolerant and patient towards each other, and be mindful of these points.

Following a tea break, where everyone had their first taste of our amazing caterer’s food, the style guidelines were discussed and agreed upon. Megan’s document was used here, with added suggestions from the group. These were points such as the importance of using simple language but using technical terminology where necessary; avoiding idiomatic expressions; writing in the second person; to points on structure – each chapter should have a brief introduction and summary; use point form and numbered lists for sequences; put keywords in bold; to points on content – include the learning objectives; find simple alternatives for experiments so that they relate to everyday things; caption pictures at the bottom, while graphs and tables are captioned at the top.
We then stuck our paper prototypes of the book on the wall, which gave a really great overview of the proposed book in its entirety. Everyone was asked to give input and ideas for content that could be included, as well as volunteer content of their own to the relevant sections. Everyone was then assigned to a unit, and each group found a space in the office to begin the task of defining the roles in their group and sourcing materials for their section.

After a very busy afternoon it was finally time for dinner. With some wine on offer, we all gathered together to serve dinner and relax around the table and enjoy the meal. There was much chatting amongst everyone – a sure sign of a successful first day!

Saturday

Breakfast was served at 09h00 at the OIS, followed by a regrouping by Helene. Mark then took to the floor to give an overview of copyright licences, and the kind of content that could be included in the book. Siyavula operates under a Creative Commons By Attribution licence (CC-BY), which is the most open of all the licences. But, despite this fact, it can still be challenging to find content that can we can pull directly into our books. This was one of the biggest challenges for our volunteers: knowing which content they legally could and could not use in their work. We directed them to websites where they would be able to find openly licensed content (either under CC-BY or a variation thereof), such as Connexions, OER Commons, and CK12 Flexbooks, but as is the case with so much content on the internet, it is made for the American curriculum so needs reworking before it can be applied to the South African context.

The day was spent sourcing material for each unit, sifting through rich-media, and creating new content for various sections. Some groups were lucky in that educators had shared material for a particular section, which meant they already had a head start on content for their unit, while others had very little if nothing at all for their section, and had to source material from scratch. The whole process is time and energy consuming, but with the team always on hand and Dominique and Thapelo providing invaluable assistance, the day went relatively smoothly.

It was agreed that at 18h00 everyone would stop what they were doing and upload their content to Connexions. This caused anxiety for some, as they felt their work was not ready to be seen by anyone else, never mind put online! We assured everyone that their work would remain private to the group for now, but it that it was necessary to get it onto Connexions in order for us to pull it together into a collection, and show it as the first draft of the book. We stress-tested Carl’s new tool for importing Word documents into Connexions, which worked really well! We did run into a few issues with Connexions however, where the website fell over and nothing further could be imported! It was at this stage that we called it a day, and brought everyone together for a final check-in before dinner.

Overall, Saturday was very productive, with most teams either having completed their unit or being very close to completion. Despite many people feeling tired after a long and busy day of creating content (we worked out that each person in the room was effectively creating 6 hours of teaching content to cover the entire syllabus for the year!), the atmosphere at dinner time was jovial, with much laughter and conversation filling the room.

Sunday

Breakfast was served again at 09h00, with a brief opening by Helene. Everyone was given time to finish up their content and upload it to Connexions. Unfortunately we had technical issues with Connexions again, so everyone’s documents were sent to Megan, who compiled everything into one large document – the first draft of the book.

Following this we had a debriefing session with Helene, where we looked at the next steps in the process to finishing the book. Below is the process that was agreed upon:

Thursday 20 October

• Everyone can work on their documents, but then all documents must be added to Dropbox on or before Thursday noon

Monday 24 October

• We will compile everyone’s documents to form the most up to date version of the book
• This will be put on Annotate for our life sciences group to review and comment on
• It will stay up for two weeks

Monday 7 November

• The book will close for comments, but you will still be able to consult the comments and proposed changes
• There will be an opportunity for everyone that is willing to make the necessary changes to do so, and produce a new version of the book

Monday 21 November

• The new version of the book will go onto Annotate again and will be available to a wider pool of experts to comment on and review

Improved process

In our debriefing we discussed suggestions for how to improve the process for next time. The following points were raised:

1. The second day was too long – some felt it would have been better to end at 17h00 on Saturday, and go on later than 12h00 on Sunday.
2. The unit assignments should have been finalised before the weekend, in order for people to come better prepared (this was made possible but was not enforced).
3. We need to prepare documentation about copyright, so that everyone can consult a handbook on what is and is not allowed when taking content from the internet.
4. The paper prototyping exercise where suggestions of additional content were given, should rather come later, in order for everyone to get to work sooner, and have more solid content before adding in the extras.
5. The tagging issues (using red tags for Connexions uploading) need to be clarified / resolved.
6. The formatting of documents needed to be explained at the beginning.
7. Role defining needed to take place as soon as the groups were established. It was suggested that one person search online for photos, one search for rich-media / content, and one put it all together. What was happening was that each person worked on a section of a unit, and so covered all 3 roles, instead of each person having one role and going from there.
8. Having a volunteer present in each group who has technical knowledge (Connexions knowledge, understands copyright etc) would be very helpful.
9. It would be helpful to establish all the technology resources upfront – i.e. which browser is best to use, where to search for content.
10. Try and source more content from educators before the weekend, so that we have a wide base of resources to draw from for each chapter.

The way forward

1. There will always be an annotateable version of the book available online, and we will endeavour to have the book properly maintained and updated. On the 1 December we will start neatening up the book, and depending on the scope, size and detail of the comments, in the first week of January it should be ready to be made widely available!
2. We will sort out the authors’ list depending on everyone’s discussed specifications.
3. We will be sourcing the requested pictures, and will include these in the book.
4. We will create a mailing list to keep everyone in the loop.

The Siyavula team would like to say a huge thank you to everyone that was involved in any way in making this weekend a possibility! To everyone that gave up their weekend, to those that contributed content, to Helene for her expertise and patience – thank you!

Once again a large amount of preparation was done to ensure the day ran smoothly, including brainstorming any potential issues that may arise, and having solutions at the ready! Heather spent days splitting each chapter of Grade 11 Maths and Physical Science on Connexions into smaller modules, which meant that every volunteer would be given a more manageable amount to translate, and be able to ask for a second / third / fourth assignment, and finish at the end of the day with a great sense of achievement. Heather and I also derived copies of each assignment, and I emailed each volunteer their assignment before Saturday, so that on arrival at the computer lab they could find a seat and get going. By deriving copies of each module it saved the volunteers a lot of time (Connexions can be a bit slow sometimes), and it also meant that we could set the roles correctly and have all the correct privileges set in the modules, in order to be able to edit the modules later on as necessary.

By 08h45 most volunteers were present, and they were all seated and already engrossed in translating their modules. Due to each chapter being broken down into smaller modules, it meant that we had up to 4 volunteers translating a chapter at a time. We grouped people according to this assignment, so that they could talk to each other and give each other assistance.

It wasn’t long before volunteers were asking me for a second assignment, and I gladly emailed them the link to their next one. The front of the lab was quiet, aside from the ticking of fingers on keyboards, and the occasional question being asked. The back of the lab was however a different story! Running concurrently with our translation Hackathon was our FullMarks development sprint, which also took place in the FIRGA lab, but at the back of the room. The developers were a noisy bunch, and added some fun cheer to the room. Carine has written a blog about what they got up to, which can be read here.

Before long it was morning tea, and at that stage we had had 4 Maths chapters and 1 Chemistry chapter translated. By lunch time there was even further progress, some volunteers already having 3 translated chapters to their name.

Carine and Natalia carried out some interviews with willing volunteers, to find out why those that had returned for the second translation Hackathon had come back, what they would say to others to motivate them to come in future, and what they hoped to see come out of the day. A video of these interviews will be made available as soon as possible.

By 17h00 excellent progress had been made: in Grade 11 Maths we had 23 modules fully translated (with another 2 since having been completed), and we now have 6 sitting at about 60% complete. To see the collection on Connexions, please click here. We had fewer people translating Grade 11 Chemistry, but we had 7 modules fully translated, and another 7 of Physics translated, which is excellent progress. Heather will make a collection on Connexions for this book once further progress has been made.

We would like to say a very big thank you to all of our volunteers that gave up their Saturday to Siyavula, in our quest to change education in South Africa; as well as to Stellenbosch University for hosting us, and to Thinus Booysen for his enthusiasm and dedication to the project, who has played a huge role in organising these events.

Well done to everyone involved, it was a brilliant day!

Mark started off with a short presentation on the process they will follow in order to upload their content to Connexions. We then showed them a sample of what their content could look like once it was uploaded. With much laughter and high spirits, the teachers began preparing their documents for uploading to Connexions, which involves styling their documents with headings, and typesetting their equations. They quickly picked this up and learned a great deal about this process. After a short lunch break work resumed, breaking only for coffee mid afternoon.

The next morning we returned to St John’s bright and early, ready to start them on the next step to getting their content onto Connexions. Pretty soon we had one module up and published, and a few more close to completion. However, technical difficulties intervened and soon the team was working to resolve the issues. The teachers remained upbeat and positive despite these difficulties and carried on with the preparation steps of their documents. After a short lunch break, Mark showed the teachers some of the other features of Connexions, such as the collection editor and how to reuse other work that is already on the website.

Despite the technical difficulties experienced on Tuesday, the teachers felt that they had gained some useful knowledge about using word processors and the methods needed to style their documents. One teacher commented that she was planning to teach her students how to use document styling in word processors, as many people don’t know how to use them properly!

At the end of all the hard work over the course of the 2 days, the Siyavula team and St John’s teachers enjoyed a well deserved dinner at La Rustica, where they were able to relax together and chat in an informal environment.

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/

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)!

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.

Objectives

The objectives of our Hackathons has always been to improve FHSST. The focus of the Hackathons in the first semester was to upload maths and physical science exemplar papers for Grades 10 – 12 to FullMarks. The goal here was to uploaded 180 questions and solutions per Hackathon, which averages out to around 10 questions per volunteer with a laptop. Once volunteers had mastered FullMarks we would move them on to editing chapters on Connexions.

Approach

Through our Hackathons on UCT campus we are providing a space, process and structure for volunteers to make a meaningful contribution to an education initiative, which not only provides them with a worthwhile outreach outlet, but also helps us improve FHSST. Through our project we are channelling the efforts of many individuals that are willing and happy to volunteer their time to support education, and with our focus of getting the books onto the government approved list this year, we can really add value to their contributions by maximising the impact nationally. Making a difference to education is certainly easier to do in collaboration as a team, than attempts made in isolation by individuals.

Bottlenecks, challenges and refining our process

Over the course of nine Hackathons we have smoothed out the creases and reduced the bottlenecks we experienced in our first few Hackathons. Our process now is by no means perfect, but we have certainly learned a lot along the way, and after each Hackathon we have revised and revisited the previous night’s experiences, in order to improve and become more efficient for every coming week.

Bottlenecks and challenges

Our first hackathon served as an introduction to FHSST and Siyavula, and that ran smoothly as Neels gave a presentation. Following that everyone listened and asked questions about the books and what they would be doing at the Hackathons. The second Hackathon is where things got interesting. We had 33 volunteers arrive, which was fantastic for us – this was the biggest Hackathon turnout we had seen in any of our Hackathons from 2010. While we felt we had prepared adequately for the evening, we experienced a few technical difficulties. We had two flashsticks with us that had OpenOffice as well as the exemplar papers on them, but when faced with approximately 20 people with laptops (we weren’t expecting so many brand new people), all needing OpenOffice, this was not nearly enough. In addition to having the exemplar papers on the flashsticks we had also placed the content on UCT’s student portal Vula. But, as we were relatively new to Vula, we uploaded it to an area of the website that wasn’t ideal. One of our volunteers stepped up and reuploaded the content to a more user friendly area. We also had some issues with Macs that people had, as they wouldn’t read our flashsticks, plus the copy of OpenOffice we had was the wrong version for Macs. Once again a volunteer assisted and downloaded the right version and they were able to get going. As we encouraged volunteers to use Firefox at our Hackathons, many people didn’t know the settings for UCT to get online, and our team not being UCT based, didn’t either, so there were some problems there.

In addition to these teething problems, we didn’t anticipate so many people struggling with FullMarks. In retrospect we realised that the help sheets we provided everyone with were too text heavy, and so the volunteers weren’t reading them. Our team also could have done with a few practice sessions, as not all of us had used it recently. FullMarks on its own is giving us some issues – there seem to be some bugs that are becoming more apparent the more we use it. In addition to this, the online editor is difficult to use, but that is being upgraded and the various bugs investigated, so those problems should fall away in the not too distant future.

Although we had some issues initially, the volunteers were great at stepping up and helping each other, offering assistance to us with regards to using Vula, downloading OpenOffice on our behalf (we can’t access the UCT wireless network as we don’t have logins) and helping each other get online. Despite us feeling a bit frazzled at the end of the evening, we got some positive feedback from volunteers who felt the Hackathon went well! There was certainly a great vibe in the room, and people were chatting – I think the fact that the volunteers needed each other’s help meant that they had to interact and so got to know each other, which was a definite plus of the whole experience!

Brainstorming and streamlining

After this Hackathon we had a long debriefing and brainstorming session and started planning for our next Hackathon (Hackathon 3). Hackathon 3 turned out to be our best one up to that point (taking 2010′s Hackathons into account too). We revised our process sheet and combined it with the assignment sheet, and gave clearer and easy to read instructions, with specific reference to tagging (without proper tagging the questions will not be found by teachers using FullMarks). We burned multiple copies of dvds with all the open programmes, exemplar papers and help sheets. We also changed how we would set up the room – we had a check-in station at the entrance to the venue, where on arrival volunteers would check in with me, and then proceed on to Natalia, Carine or Heather for assignments depending on their choice of subject and whether or not they had a laptop. We also arranged the desks into 3 big work stations, encouraging people to sit together and not group around small tables.

Refining our process

Prior to Hackathon 3 we had a team training session on using FullMarks, to refresh our memories and ensure we could better cope with helping the volunteers. We also had a meeting shortly before we left for the Hackathon, so that each team member was up to speed and knew where to find all of the content. This advanced and thorough planning made for a less stressful evening for our team. The volunteers still needed a fair amount of help at the Hackathon, as the process of using the FullMarks template and uploading to FullMarks was brand new to them. We found that despite our revised process document, people still weren’t reading them properly, and so didn’t write their names or FullMarks user ID’s on their assignment sheets – information we needed when checking what content had been uploaded by each volunteer.

Throughout the Hackathons we stuck with our streamlined process of arranging the room before each Hackathon, and having our registration and assignment tables at the entrance, as we felt it worked well and it meant that there wasn’t a crowd around one table all needing Heather’s attention, which is what we had to deal with last year. Over the course of the next few Hackathons we revised our process / assignment sheet , trying to take out as much text as possible, and have a diagram that at a glance would show the entire upload process in as simple a way as possible. We also made a point of sitting with a volunteer that needed help, until they had uploaded one question in full. This made a difference as it meant volunteers learned the process in full, and were better able to help not only themselves, but others at their table too.

Over the course of the Hackathons we soon realised we needed a way to better manage brand new volunteers that were bringing laptops. We had reached the stage where the majority of the laptop users didn’t need as much help anymore, but at each Hackathon we had a couple of new volunteers, and it didn’t make sense to have each of us going through the same process with new people repeatedly. It was decided that new people would be sent to a separate table where Heather would talk them through the process in full, before they could go and join a large table. From the rest of the team’s point of view this made a huge difference to the help that was needed, but it did mean that Heather spent the night repeating herself as volunteers trickled in at different times, so she couldn’t give the demonstration once or twice, but had to multiple times. As a result of this she was also quite disconnected from what happened at that particular Hackathon.

Assignment sheets and checking uploaded questions

From the start, Heather had the task of creating our assignment sheets, which involved creating a database containing all the exemplar papers and question numbers, and then creating a form letter using form fields. This meant that we ended up with assignment sheets with the assignments automatically generated and assigned to each page. Our assignment sheet was double sided, with the front page covering the upload and tagging process, and the other side giving the assignment. We split exemplar papers up into multiple assignments, with each volunteer being given an assignment of around four to five questions long, which could be broken down into smaller questions depending on the type of question given. We thought this was a reasonable length, as we were hoping for up to ten questions being uploaded per person at each Hackathon. However, over the course of Hackathon 3 to 6, volunteers were still needing a lot of help from us and so the going was slow. We also ran a focus group (which can be read about here) at Hackathon 5, which involved some of our strongest uploaders, which affected our productivity for that week.

In preparation of Hackathon 7 we decided to try an alternate method for exemplar assignments: make them shorter! Each week of Hackathons we were averaging around 40 – 50 questions, which was a much slower rate of upload than we had anticipated. In an attempt to encourage people to speed up, we cut each assignment down to 2 questions long. This meant that volunteers could feel a sense of achievement on completion of an assignment, but we could also monitor who was coming up for their second assignment. We think that this potentially made a difference – some people did move onto a second assignment, but at the same time that we implemented this, we also moved our top uploaders onto Connexions, which meant our upload count to FullMarks was affected by this change. In future Hackathons we will most likely keep assignments shorter, as it does make for a less daunting assignment.

By Hackathon 6 we decided it was time to introduce a new activity: checking of questions uploaded to FullMarks. We randomly assigned FullMarks question ID’s to volunteers, along with a step by step process of what needed to be checked for in each question, i.e. what the perfect question should look like. They needed to give constructive criticism in the comments field under each question, so that the author of that question could then make the suggested changes (the author receives an email when a question of theirs is commented on). This was not too well received – people that were present felt that they were being criticised for their work by their peers, while those that were not present received emails with comments and they didn’t know why. This was an oversight on our part, and the following day I emailed all our FHSST members to explain the purpose of the activity, that its aim was to improve the quality of the questions on FullMarks, and not intended as a criticism of them and their work.

Paper people

The people we have working on paper are an ongoing challenge for us. Ideally we would like everyone working on a computer, but not everyone has a laptop and we are struggling to organise a computer lab on campus (we did a survey amongst our volunteers and found they would prefer Hackathons to stay in a venue on campus, so we can’t move to a nearby school’s computer lab). Paper people have been making good contributions to our textbooks, as they have been working on the model solutions for the exercises in the textbooks. The only problem however, is managing this process. Volunteers haven’t always numbered the assignments correctly, or put their names on them, so when it comes to sorting through the assignments each Wednesday after a Hackathon, it presents some challenges! It also means that at some stage someone is going to have to type up all the work, and check it as they go along.

Team at tables

From Hackathon 6 we decided that at each Hackathon we were to each sit at a table with the volunteers, and work along side them. The aim of this was to get to know them better, and vice versa. At this Hackathon it ended up only being Carine sharing a table, as the rest of our laptops were given out to volunteers to use, plus there were still people needing assistance. Carine felt that she got good insight into what it is like being a volunteer at our Hackathons, as she experienced the process of using the OpenOffice template and uploading to FullMarks, and asking the table for help when she got stuck with the Math type. She became part of the friendly banter, and saw how the volunteers helped each other and problem solved together. Carine has continued to sit at a table at Hackathons, and continues to ask questions and find out about the whole Hackathon experience.

Snack table, pizza and logistics

In all our Hackathons we have always done well on the catering and logistics side of things. We always come well equipped with many power cables and multiplugs, a projector should we wish to show the volunteers anything, and all the necessary signage. Before each Hackathon we go shopping at Checkers on Main Road Rondebosch (we almost own shares in it now), and stock up on fizzy drinks, juice, water, chips, sweets, plastic cups, paper plates and serviettes. We arrive at UCT’s RW James Room L by 5pm, and set up the room and put up posters in preparation of the arrival of our volunteers. I always prepare my pizza order form early in the day, based on the Eventbrite signups and which are the most popular Butler’s pizzas. I place my order with Butler’s at 17h30, for a 19h30 delivery. They give us a 33% discount which is fantastic, and the pizza always arrives on time and piping hot.

We have done a few pizza experiments over the weeks: last year everyone was allowed to choose their own medium sized pizza, but we felt that this didn’t encourage conversation and building community. This year we created a communal pizza table, in the hopes of bringing in a slightly more social aspect to the Hackathons. Unfortunately as sometimes happens, people started taking advantage of the free pizza and piled their plates high with food and stashing it to take home, while others were more restrained and only took two or three pieces to start with. Those that held back initially ended up missing out, as by the time they were ready for their second helping, the pizza was mostly finished. As a result of this we tried a new approach: we would allocate a certain number of pizzas to each table, which meant we could control how much pizza each table received, and anyone taking more than their due would have to deal with a table of disapproving looks. This approach received mixed responses. Some were happy with it and thought it worked well, while others didn’t like it as they said they didn’t have a choice over what pizza slices they could choose. We ended up setting up a poll on Vula with three pizza options: 1) choose your own medium pizza, 2) communal pizza, or 3) pizza at each table. We had a tie between choosing your own pizza and communal pizza, so for our last Hackathon we went with communal pizza. Should we decide to do individual pizzas again, we need to warn attendees in advance so that they know to get their orders in on time, otherwise people arrive late and then don’t get pizza.

In addition to some people taking too much pizza, it has become apparent that some come along just for the food. This number is definitely in the minority, but it is a pity as the majority of our volunteers arrive and work hard, giving up three hours of their Tuesday evening each week to improve FHSST, while others come and make a very poor effort, arrive just in time for the pizza delivery, and leave shortly after eating. We will address this problem before we start Hackathons again, as aside from being unfair to those that work hard, we are not there to sponsor people’s supper with no effort on their part.

Achievements

Overall we feel that a community is being built around FHSST and that people are taking ownership of the project. We have seen volunteers returning week after week, making friends within the group, offering assistance to their peers, putting in many hours and having a great attitude towards the project. People are also learning new skills – using OpenOffice and how styles work, as well as learning about open tools that exist online. We hope that they will share their acquired knowledge with other people, especially any teachers they may know.

Conclusion

As a team we have learned how to improve our Hackathons, and the planning that is required to ensure they run smoothly. We still have a long way to go as there are always improvements that can be made, but we have an online management tool in the pipeline that once built will be able to manage Hackathons for us, based on all that we have learned over the last nine weeks and last year. We have learned about our own strengths and weaknesses, what each team member brings to the table and the important role that each of us plays within Siyavula. We have learned how to function as a team, how to rely on each other, but also how to stand alone and be independent from each other.

We have also learned a lot about volunteers and how people react in different situations. We have been so impressed with how people have stepped up and offered assistance to their fellow volunteers and to us when help was needed. We really appreciate this, especially knowing that we could rely on volunteers each week.

Overall the last nine weeks have been very insightful and we have learned so much about running Hackathons and working with volunteers. Our process is by no means perfect, and we will continue to learn and experiment with new processes once we start our Hackathons again.

Our turnout at last night’s Hackathon was smaller than usual, but nevertheless we had 21 enthusiastic volunteers! Mark went from table to table and gave everyone a status update on the project and the progress being made.

To expand on this, we are very excited to announce that the new Grade 10 versions of FHSST with the rich-media and model solutions embedded are now available online! This is due to the hard work of our dedicated volunteers and our team at Siyavula – well done to all involved! Please have a look at the maths textbook here and the physical science textbook here.

Our website FullMarks is showing real progress and gaining national traction too, which is great as some of the areas the website is getting hits from are outside of cities in which we have done training. You can see on the image below where the hits are coming from. Cape Town is seeing high traffic outside of our Hackathon evenings, with other areas such as East London, Kimberley, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg also being areas we are receiving traffic from, which is fantastic.

The new editor for FullMarks is currently under development, which will make contributing questions and answers to FullMarks that much easier. In addition to this, the Word exporter is also imminent and will be the next improvement made to the site.

All our volunteers with laptops and internet access have been uploading exemplar papers to FullMarks, which has helped contribute to the maths and physical science content on the website. We are moving volunteers that have made good progress with this process on to a new exercise, so last night we introduced Umeshree, Alex and Leandra to the Connexions website! We asked them to assist in proofreading chapters, an exercise they enjoyed doing and they seemed to find the website easy enough to navigate.

We also introduced a new way of distributing pizza, which was an experiment on our part that was met with mixed reactions! This year we created a communal pizza table as we hoped it would get people socialising a bit more and assist in forming an FHSST community. We found that this didn’t seem to encourage any more conversation than last year, so last night we took a variety of Butler’s pizzas to each of the three tables, hoping this would encourage a more social aspect while people were eating. Some people were happy with the arrangement and thought it worked well as it meant they could carry on working without having to get up to fetch pizza, while others didn’t like the arrangement as it meant they had limited choice of what slices they could eat. We have thus created a poll on Vula where we are asking our volunteers to vote for their preferred method of pizza distribution. We will analyse the results and decide on the best way forward.

We are also very excited that our Hackathons have reached Stellenbosch University in the form of a big FHSST translation day! There has been demand for our books to be translated into Afrikaans, so with the help of Thinus Booysen at Stellenbosch we have organised for this to take place on Saturday 7 May, followed by a spitbraai for all involved. We are aiming for every volunteer to translate a full chapter on that day, so with 100 volunteers present, which is what we’re aiming for, we could have all six books translated! Have a look at the Facebook page here.

Next week will be our last Hackathon for a while, due to Siyavula work commitments and then UCT exams and holidays. We may continue with Hackathons at the OIS for those volunteers that have transport, but we will send out notification of this. We are sad to have to put them on hold for a few weeks, but for logistical reasons it is not possible to continue right now.

Thank you to everyone that has been attending and for all your contributions – see you next week!

The second term for UCT students has begun, and this being their first week of term was no deterrent for Hackathon attendance. We had 23 sign ups on Eventbrite, but we have learned that this is no indication of what the turnout will be!

At around 18h30 we were sitting on 14 volunteers, which was of concern as I had preordered 23 large Butler’s pizzas, and was toying with the idea of cancelling part of the order. But, by 19h00 I was very pleased that I had sat tight, as the volunteers streamed in – some had been writing tests, but some had also arrived on a Jammie Shuttle that was running late. We ended up with 31 volunteers in attendance, with almost every seat taken at the large tables we created.

This week we decided to send new volunteers to a separate table initially, where Heather sat with them and explained the uploading process to them. In terms of getting them going this worked really well, as when the time came for them sit on their own and work on a paper, they were much more confident than if we left them to read the documents first and then begin. Of course for every pro there is a con: this new process meant that Heather was constantly trying to juggle her explanations of FullMarks, as people arrived throughout the evening and were sent her way, and so she wasn’t able to sit down with them and explain the process once or twice. We need to improve this process, and will come up with a variation of this system before next week’s Hackathon.

The rest of the volunteers got on well with their assignments, and there seemed to be fewer technical questions this week. We are hoping that this means everyone is better understanding the math-type in OpenOffice, as well as how FullMarks works. However, we are finding that each week people aren’t filling out the coversheet of their assignment properly, which creates quite a job for Heather the next day as she tries to make sense of what people worked on and completed the night before. We need to rectify this next week as the information we need from them is fairly straightforward, and will take 2 minutes to explain to everyone, and 2 minutes for them to complete before they leave.

We also decided to bring extra laptops with us last night, and handed them out to volunteers that had no laptops. We are getting close to the end of the paper assignments, so we really need to get more volunteers working on computers and FullMarks, and where possible starting the process of getting handwritten assignments typed up and uploaded to FullMarks, so that we can pull the answers into FHSST.

You can see the progress that has been made on the exemplar papers on the pie charts below:

Last night there were some volunteers asking for life sciences and English assignments, which means our Hackathons are reaching outside of the maths and physical science spheres! Those that are after these assignments don’t have laptops unfortunately, so we will have to set aside ours for them, as we do not have paper assignments for those subjects, only exemplar papers that need to be uploaded to FullMarks.

All in all there were 52 questions uploaded last night, which is a good effort, but we look forward to seeing that number doubled in the near future.

Thank you to everyone that came – see you next week!

UCT students are currently on holiday, so it was great watching our Eventbrite attendance sign up page increase in numbers in the lead up to last night’s Hackathon, to the point where we were expecting 23 people. But even more exciting than this, was having eight new sign ups last night (some signed up but could not stay), which put us at 29 volunteers in attendance! This was a great turnout considering everyone is supposed to be on holiday, and wonderful to still have new people hearing about FHSST and signing up.

This week we decided to continue with uploading exemplar papers to FullMarks and not introduce anything new just yet. This was a good call, as with so many new people present, and some volunteers only uploading to FullMarks for the first time this week, it was all hands on deck for the Siyavula team – it wouldn’t have been possible to provide support to people starting completely new processes.

Volunteers are still getting used to using the template for OpenOffice, which includes formatting equations in the maths editor and all that involves, along with problem solving i.e. how a question should be styled, in terms of reference material or the question-answer format, whether a table should be recreated or if a screenshot is best. These things get better with time and practice, but they are challenges that are still coming up each week that volunteers need assistance with. As a result of this, some people hadn’t yet uploaded their questions to FullMarks, and needed some guidance with this process too. We find that if we sit with a volunteer while they do one whole question, they are more likely to get their next one correct and not need as much help the second time around. This is something that we will be sure to carry on with, as it makes a difference to how confident a volunteer will feel about the whole process, and attempting it on their own.

Carine spent the majority of the Hackathon sitting at the one table of volunteers and working on an assignment, which gave her perspective of what it is like being at a Hackathon from a volunteer’s point of view. She was able to offer guidance to those around her, but also receive help from the table when she encountered a problem that she needed assistance with. In addition to this, it was a nice opportunity to really chat to the volunteers and get to know some of them a bit better. Neels, Heather, Natalia and I spent the evening going from table to table checking on how people were doing, attending to queries as they arose, and taking some time to chat where possible. We really want to get to know our volunteers better, as it is as a result of volunteer contributions that FHSST came about in the first place, and they are the reason we are able to continue and to improve our books. It makes for a really great atmosphere when there’s conversation and people are able to relax into the Hackathon and connect with others at their table and in the room.

It is also important for us to know what the appeal of Hackathons is for volunteers. We have had some interesting feedback from the evenings, and found that some volunteers view working on the model solutions as revision for themselves, to keep the work fresh in their minds. In so doing it is a fun and less stressful way to revise as they can socialise a bit with their friends while giving back to the community too. People are enjoying the work, the process is fun, and a sense of community is being established as everyone is working towards the same goal, while being there with their friends and getting to know other people too.

Heather has created some pie charts that show the progress of uploading exemplar papers to FullMarks, broken down into physics, chemistry and maths assignments:

We had 51 questions finalised on FullMarks last night, which is our highest number yet! We are very proud of everyone that finalised questions, but also of everyone who came and contributed. As always, Butler’s Pizza did not disappoint, and they arrived with delicious pizza to keep our volunteers energy levels up.

We will have a Hackathon next week too, and while it will still be the university vacation, we look forward to another strong turnout. Thank you to everyone for coming!