Interested candidates should send a curriculum vitae and motivation letter to Mark Horner at mark.horner@shuttleworthfoundation.org. We would like to fill this position as soon as possible and will begin interviewing candidates from 15^th March 2011.

The successful candidate will be required to work in four primary areas (the relative weighting of these activities is negotiable, based on the candidate’s qualifications and experience).

1. FHSST / FullMarks content authoring and editing
   Working on our core products will require the candidate to:
   • be proficient in mathematics, science and information technologies;
   • be able to assess and review resources / tools and integrate them, as appropriate, into:
     1. FHSST books,
     2. FullMarks,
     3. Training courses, and
     4. Workshops; and
   • support the improvement and refining of the PDF generation process for texts from the Connexions platform. [Familiarity with LaTeX will be an advantage.]
2. Event support
   Our events are run by our team as a whole, with national demand, and this requires that the candidate be:
   • comfortable managing a group (10-15 people);
   • comfortable managing and training diverse groups (culture, socio-economic background etc.);
   • comfortable presenting to a large audience (~100 people); and
   • willing to travel within South Africa for periods of a few days.
3. Training workshops
   We conduct training on various platforms and tools that support both educators and learners to achieve improved collaboration and educational outcomes. This requires that the candidate:
   • will have to run technical training workshops with:
     1. educators,
     2. learners, and
     3. management staff;
   • be comfortable acting as the primary trainer;
   • be comfortable supporting a primary trainer; and
   • facilitate group discussions.
4. Technical support of all activities
   The candidate will be required to provide technical support at events and workshops showcasing the various tools and products.

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

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

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

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

Minimal formal requirements are a BSc. (Hons), BSc. Eng. (Hons) or higher degree. An education diploma would be significantly advantageous.

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

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

Connexions separates the content viewing aspect of the site from the editing side. If you find a resource you like and would like to edit your current options are:

• add the content to a lens (your favourites for example) and then from the lens listing add the content to your personal workspace or a workgrouph, or
• go to the workspace or workgroup where you would like to work on the new version and then use the search functionality to locate the resource and add it.

Both of these require an intermediate step which is non-intuitive and slows the process down.

Here is a screen capture of the content header of a typical module on Connexions.

This image is small but the list of links on the top right are actions for the user, Add to a lens, Download PDF etc. Why can’t there just be an allow-me-to-immediately-edit-my-own-version-of-this-resource button? Of course there can, with a slightly different name of course.

In partnership with the Connexions team, Upfront Systems have been developing this functionality for us. I was visiting Upfront yesterday to do some beta-testing and captured a few quick screenshots along the way to give you a preview of what is coming.

The new option will be called Reuse / Edit. Reuse is applicable if you are not currently an author of the module and are making your own version whereas editing is applicable if you are the author or have editing privileges on the resource. The option will be added to the actions listed at the top of the module with the new list looking like this (without the shading of course):

Selecting this option will expand a drop-down menu. This menu will be sensitive to whether your on a module in isolation or browsing a collection. If the latter is true then it will ask which of the two items, the module or the collection, you want to work on as shown on the right.

Once you’ve selected which resource you’re interested in you just need to select the relevant options in the dialog boxes that follow.

The options that you can select cover:

• where you want the resource located, allowing you to move it to a collaborative workgroup or your personal space,
• decide whether you’d like to jump straight into editing it or come back and browse for more content, and
• whether or not you agree to the licence (a necessity to ensure the integrity of the repository content).

That’s it. Conflicts with existing versions in the target location will be checked and the user will be warned and given a choice of actions depending on the specific circumstances. This will be much faster than the old process and a lot more transparent and intuitive to users.

No definitive release date yet but it’ll be out as soon as we can get it out.

Part 1 – Introduction

Part 1 of the manual deals with the Siyavula project in general and explains how Siyavula, Connexions and all the other partners fit together. It also covers our suggestions for starting to form your own workgroups, for support and the sharing of resources.

The first part of the manual can be downloaded from the papers section or directly here.

Part 2 – Casual Browsing

The second part deals with what you can do on the Connexions site as a passive consumer of material, without needing to create an account, login or register in any way.

The second part of the manual can be downloaded directly here.

Part 3 – Registered User

The benefits of registering for an account and logging in are explained in Part 3 of the manual with step-by-step instructions on how to get going.

The third part of the manual can be downloaded directly here.

Part 4 – Workgroups

In the final part we link back to the idea of creating workgroups and how you can use the Connexions platform as a tool to support real-world or virtual workgroup activities.

The final part of the manual can be downloaded directly here.

Feedback on Connexions collection: Natuurwetenskappe Graad 7 (http://cnx.org/content/col11078/1.1)

Baie dankie vir die artikel wat u op sure en basisse wat op die internet gepos was, dit het my gehelp met al my natuurwetenskap wer en oor 3 weke sal ons die grad sewe eksamen op dit skryf. Dus is die informasie van ‘n groot hul en ek wou net laat u weet dat alle inligting wat u op die webblad gepos het nie net deur ek en my twee susters gebruik word ne, maar ook deur ander kinders by ons skool.

Groete en alle voorspoed!

Please download your subject’s complete workbook!

We invite you to search for the workbook which relates to your grade and subject and download it as a .pdf. Try printing it out as a reference in class or source of alternative examples and exercises.

Join a workgroup and collaborate on adapting it.

If you are not yet part of a workgroup, please join a workgroup where you can post questions or ask for help. You can discuss changes to the workbook or share your own material. One person make a copy of the collection for your learning area/grade and add it to the workgroup. Send out an email to all group members asking them to take a look at it and post in the forum their likes and dislikes about the workbook. Have a meeting to discuss how you’d like to change it / improve it / contextualise it and then work as a team to make a better workbook you can all use next year!

Example 1: Collection in Connexions

See the Table to Contents on the Grade 4 maths workbook below. The workbook is split into four terms and each term has a number of sections or topics.

Example 2: Collection downloaded as a .pdf

See the Table to Contents on the Grade 4 maths workbook below. This .pdf file contains all the pages in the collection in a single file, ready for print.

How to find the workbook for your subject and grade

Go to the Siyavula lenses at http://siyavula.cnx.org/lenses/siyavula and open the learning area you fall under. In this case it would be Siyavula: Mathematics (Gr. 4-6).

Search for it like you normally do, but as a search ‘CRITERIA’ use ‘COURSE’ and the ‘RESOURCE TYPE’. See example below:

Some of the highlights of September were:

Second Teachers’ Workshop

We held our second workshop for teachers in Kwa-Zulu Natal on the 4th and 5th of September. Approximately 60 people attended our workshop and it was a resounding success. The workshop goals were:

• show the power of the Connexions platform for using, building,
  sharing and adapting resources;
• promote the formation of new communities forming that use
  Connexions as a use to support their activities and provide the
  possibility of for new communities to form; and
• provide an environment that can enhance existing communities or
  swap and share groups.

You can read more about it at
Kwa-Zulu Natal Workshop

Community Presentation Available

We made the slides for the community side of our workshop available and you can find them on here on Connexions.

Teach South Africa

We had the opportunity to train the Teach South Africa ambassadors to use the Connexions site, please read the blog post for more details:
Teach South Africa Ambassadors

This was a great opportunity to provide new teachers with access to resources to help them get their teaching careers off to a good start. We hope to have an opportunity to train the new ambassadors early next year so that they can benefit from the content and community tools on Connexions.

Technical Support

We also had the opportunity to respond to a number of support requests and we are looking forward to more from interested workgroups.

We’ve trained two teachers from KZN to provide support to workgroups in Tongaat so those groups will receive support if they request it.

Things are ticking along steadily and October will be a busy month. Visit this site for updates on our activities and for support requests send an email to support@siyavula.org.za

http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/410/98/39701.html

http://www.skillsportal.co.za/learning/090908-teacher-resources-open-education.htm

http://www.it-online.co.za/content/view/1311198/142/

http://www.techsmart.co.za/features/news/Siyavula_platform_opens_minds.html

A modest start but hopefully the first of many

Our second assignment was a workshop in Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN) at the Protea Hotel Karridene where we would train 60 people, mostly teachers but some headmasters and even some KZN Department of Education circuit managers. A circuit manager can be responsible for hundreds of schools.

The majority of the teachers were from a ward of approximately 20 schools in the Tongaat area. These schools had been recommended to us by the Deputy Director General of General Education for national government, Palesa Tyobeka, as they were already pro-active in trying to collaboratively address the need for better coordination between primary and high schools in the GET phase.

Ultimately we decided to keep our primary community and technical processes the same but include more technical training time on the second day by starting the day an hour earlier. That would allow us to have more time to form workgroups on the site at the end of the workshop.

The community process was to be the same and the slides from the first workshop can be found here:

Today Lisa, Cynthia and Karien left to head off to Estonia, California, and Cape Town respectively. It has been great having the ISKME team here and they’ve added a lot to our team strategy and approach.

We’re generating a lot of interest at the stall and many teachers have shown interest and left details so that they can be contacted about further project developments. We’ve had lots of requests for training in other areas and we will review these once SciFest09 is over and integrate them into our strategy for the year wherever possible.

Khosi and Zipi had a SABC radio interview which they held in isiXhosa.

We had a number of our training sessions that were filled to capacity which is really helping us perfect our training.

Day 6

Today William also left to head back to Cape Town and his Khanya work. Having a team with a diverse set of backgrounds really added a dynamicism to the training.

We had some great discussions with a SASOL representative, curriculum advisor and teachers all from the Secunda area that have already been working together. There is golden opportunity to connect with established programmes to deliver our message to teachers and support the formation of communities around the sharing of content.

We had a special evening training session at the Rhodes Education Department which went off without a hitch. The room was filled to capacity (28 machines) and participants included teachers and faculty. We received a very positive response from all participants and the session ran over time with everybody happy to learn more.

We have to actively engage passers-by and we don’t have an obvious “attraction”. At first this seemed like it might be a problem but
every member of the team has come up with their own “pick-up line” to get people hooked. Rather than being detrimental it has actually
proved a good team-building exercise.

Highlights:

• Deputy Vice-Chancellor of UKZN, Prof. Peter Zacharias stopped by to discuss teacher/curriculum development
• a really lengthy discussion of quality issues with the media
• Carolina showed us some of the UNAWE content which looks great

Day 3 – The Workshop
The workshops are run by two primary presenters and we’ve been rotating through all the permutations and having a daily debrief to
discuss challenges and flow and we’re converging quickly on a few strategies that are working well so far. By the end of SciFest we
should have encountered a few more curveballs to help us test our strategies.

Highlights:

• 4 Curriculum advisors participated
• Diverse groups are going very well

Day 4 – The Stall

Steve Vosloo has joined us at SciFest09. He’s helping out at the stall and doing some informal research on mobile usage.

Highlights:

• The DVC of UKZN returned to discuss some concrete ways of moving forward and we’ve got some great ideas – stay tuned
• Khosi had teachers who’d been to her workshop in the morning explaining our project to other teachers at our stand
• Met a teacher from Kimberley Girls’ High who related their textbook writing initiative
• Interviewed by Rhodes University journalism students

Day 4 – The Workshop
The workshops are going very well and we’ve even integrated our SciFriend into supporting teachers and trying to help out with the site.

We ended the day with a great team dinner, observance of Earth Hour and lots of laughing – we just picked up Nandos take-aways, some drinks and took over the High Corner Guest House where most of the team is staying. A great time was had by all and, sadly, we had to say goodbye to Lisa and Cynthia.