Siyavula

The Icey Grip of Reality

quinton — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 07:24:19 +0000

Our workshop for high school educators at Vuyiseka Secondary proved somewhat of a sobering experience!
Firstly, only fifty percent of the delegates were present as others were forced to re-prioritize their lives due to other commitments. Of the five educators who attended, two were new to Siyavula.
The session had just gotten underway when we discovered a failure in the Internet connection. The school had run out of caps! Fortunately the facilitator had brought along his mobile unit so we were at least able to demonstrate some of the functionality on the site. But educators soon became aware that they needed more of a hands-on experience and suggested that we abort our efforts to enlighten them and reschedule the workshop for another date.
In view of some of the comments that were voiced by the participants, it became apparent that none had become actively involved with the site since our workshop in October last year. Some remarked that they hadn’t even used any of the resources available. The lack of technology at schools and the difficulties experienced in accessing such technology elsewhere were once again raised as reasons for not being active on Connexions.
Educators’ apathy was also revealed in statements such as “we do not have time for yet another hi-tech tool” and “we are still sticking to the old way of doing things”. One individual even remarked that there was “no time to plan” after I showed them how collaborating on Siyavula would save them time!
No date has yet been set for a follow-up session but would most likely happen during March.

Second Support Workshop for Edunova Primary Educators.

quinton — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:33:47 +0000

Makhanyiseli Primary School hosted our second support workshop for primary school educators yesterday 16 February.
Present were ten educators of whom six previously received Siyavula training. The four new members from Mzamomhle Primarywere all invited by their colleague who had already experienced the Siyavula message.
Having Connexions accounts prepared beforehand for the attendees helped much to maintain a smoothly flowing session allowing us to cover most of the content we had prepared. Although much of the session was a reinforcement of prior learning, educators were excited when shared the brand new component, the uploading of resources to Connexions.
Collaborating via online work groups was a hit, once again, although half of the participants continue to lament the shortage of technological resources at their schools and once again appealed to the team for help in this regard.
With four new members added to the Siyavula family we cannot but tag our experience yesterday as being very successful.

Siyavula Foundation layed at CHSA

quinton — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:42:57 +0000

Nine foundation phase educators from Christel House were added to the Siyavula family as a result of a training workshop conducted at the school computer lab. Although only fifty percent of the invitees were able to attend, the group we worked with were a sheer pleasure to work with. We were also very excited by the attendance of a Swiss educator, Sandra, volunteering at CHSA until May this year.

Educators responded with enthusiasm to the new learning they were able to garner and were thrilled at the idea of being able to collaborate online.

CHSA educators were trained in conceptulising the Connexions terminology, locating and downloading resources and participating in work groups.

The team has been invited back to train at their teacher development program during the June school vacation,during which time we would also need to conduct a follow-up workshop with the high school educators whom we introduced to Siyavula last year, and train a new group of intermediate phase teachers at the school.

Siyavula Workshops: Growing Active, Teacher-Led Communities

Cynthia Jimes — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:18:44 +0000

Since March of this year, ISKME has been studying Siyavula’s workshops, documenting the project’s model for teacher professional development and community building as a way to shed light on the formation and engagement of Siyavula’s OER communities. Through workshop observations and interviews with workshop facilitators and Siyavula project leaders to date, our work has revealed the following:

Workshop participants viewed the ability to share and collaborate as a key benefit of Siyavula and OER, and expressed interest in ways that they could increase collaboration at their schools. Teacher comments from the workshops included, “Wow, this is really a paradigm shift – we are sharing and can collaborate,” and “How do we move this [concept of sharing] into our school sites?”

During the workshops, observers noted that communities of teachers began to organically form groups around subject-specific content areas; however, participants and facilitators indicated that additional support is needed to help the groups sustain momentum. They also cited limited Internet access on behalf of teachers as potential hindrance to sustained communities.

Several participants expressed their intention to take concrete next steps to implement or share information about Siyavula in their schools, and two have already emerged as advocates for Siyavula, training their own colleagues on the model with help from Siyavula’s facilitators. Several requests for additional professional development sessions have emerged out of Siyavula’s initial workshops, many of which are existing communities seeking to contribute and upload their existing content to Siyavula on Connexions.

ISKME’s next steps include expanding on the community-building themes that have begun to surface from the research through analysis of data collected during its November 2009 workshop observations, school site visits and teacher interviews. During the spring of 2010, ISKME will continue its data collection efforts to document and assess the ways that individuals and communities of teachers are sharing, using, reusing and localizing Siyavula content, and how participation in Siyavula has potentially impacted teaching and learning practices and perceptions on behalf of teachers.

KZN Year-end Conference

quinton — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:51:20 +0000

Thirty-odd spirited educators gathered at Sibaya for the year-end conference on Friday 4 December 2009. The format of the gathering mimicked that of the Cape Town one.
Educators were happy to engage in the activity focussed on re-connecting and shared their experiences regarding Siyavula with enthusiasm. Of note was the fact that, even though they had encountered their fair share of challenges, solutions to many difficulties were tabled there and then, making the KZN group an unmistakable cut-above. One such challenge mentioned was the lack of computer literacy among educators. To this, a proposal that the KZN trainers fill this crucial gap was immediately accepted by the ward superintendant, Mr Selvan Chetty.
The announcement of Connexions developments in the pipe-line, was met with resounding approval once again, Full Marks again given 2 thumbs-up.

Our KZN group certainly has our attention and we thank them for their dedication and zest. KZN you rock!

Siyavula Cape Town year-end conference

quinton — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:11:47 +0000

22 November 2009 marked the Siyavula year-end conference in Cape Town.
The Schuttleworth foundation was a hive of activity before the start of the event. The focus of the morning event was to re-connect with the delegates of the Cape Town Siyavula conference, to share success stories and challenges as well discuss the way forward.
The delegates enthusiastically shared their positive experiences with regard to the use of Siyavula and other online resources. However, they bemoaned the high internet costs. In an interesting group activity the delegates discussed internet penetration in the education sector and conservative estimates place internet penetration around 10% of an educator force of 340 000.
In conclusion Mark Horner shared his vision and goals for 2010. Among the delegates the planned role out of an assessment bank, “FullMarks” generated a lot of discussion and interest.
The CPT year-end conference was also attended by two senior team members of Connexions based in Texas, USA. Kathy Fletcher and Joel Thierstein shared new developments in the pipe-line with delegates and requested suggestions from educators to help improve the Connexions platform to make Siyavula an even better resource for teachers.
To those who joined us on the Siyavula journey, thank you for your support and we hope that the platform will provide you with a lot more meaningful encounters in the future.

AMESA KZN- First upload-focussed workshop

quinton — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:32:29 +0000

Saturday 28 November saw yet another Siyavula workshop successfully executed, but this time, distinctly different from what we’ve done before.
The principle focus for this session with 50 mathematics educators, all members of the Association for Mathematics Educators of South Africa (AMESA), was the uploading of content in Word format, which delegates were requested to bring along prior to the workshop.
After about 3 hours into the session, a very enthusiastic and chirpy group, assisted by six facilitators, fired away with zest to add at least 25 pieces of content within about 3 hours.
As was the case in previous workshops, the Siyavula team created a buzz of excitement among delegates as the other functionality of CNX was unveiled. In the CNX update and forthcoming improvements session, Full Marks was again approved with resounding applaud with Wordpress following hot on it’s heels.
A big thank you to all educators who attended.

Quick edit/Reuse coming to Connexions – A Preview

Mark Horner — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:30:38 +0000

One of the most common pieces of feedback that we receive is that users find it difficult to get from browsing content, where they find something they want to build on, to actually editing their own version of that resource.

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.

Connexions training manual available

Mark Horner — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:50:52 +0000

During the training sessions that have been taking place over the last 2 months we’ve been putting together a training manual. Our ideas, as well as the Connexions site, keep evolving so expect a steady set of revisions of the manual as time goes by. That said, if you’re interested in Siyavula and getting involved, or even just seeing what it is all about start off with the manual.

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.

Another successful workshop!

quinton — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:34:13 +0000

On Wednesday 18 October we enthused 17 more educators, 3 of whom had previously been trained, from the Philippi and Nyanga areas about Siyavula OER. The workshop, which lasted for 2 hours, was attended by mathematics, science, business studies and technology high school educators who left the session thrilled at the possibilities of OER accessibility. Many commented that the timing of the workshop was brilliant since they could now utilize the materials in their planning for next year.