Updated Sun July 18, 2010 – see WebAfrica addition

In workshops for Siyavula, FullMarks or Connexions we require internet access which has proven to be quite a challenge at some venues (read more about our favourite solution here). This particular challenge always elicits one particular question from the audience: “What is the best/cheapest deal for internet access?” There is no right answer but a lot of our workshop participants are so overwhelmed they don’t even know where to start looking. So here are some personal thoughts on what to start with based on my personal access at home. If you know of better deals please leave a comment so that we can be sure to give the educators in our workshops the best information.

I don’t endorse/support/guarantee any of these products or information. This is just some advice to help get you started when looking for the best deal – you are ultimately responsible for your own choice. I’ve put my choice at the bottom so you know where my money is going.

Companies update their packages all the time but remember that prices should be coming down so you should not pay more than the options listed here but if you can find a cheaper one go for it. These are the best deals we know about but hopefully better deals will be available soon.

Every different kind of service has a different acronym and there are sometimes, not always, technical differences. This is not a training resource just a quick pointer so if you want to learn what it all means you will need to do a little more research.

DSL / ADSL / iDSL (what iBurst call their ADSL package)

Important points:

• You need a Telkom line and you will have to pay Telkom a monthly fee
• This is before you actually get internet access – this is just the possibility of internet access.
• You need to connect through your Telkom line so this is a fixed solution – you can’t move from place to place with it.
• You also need an Internet Service Provider (ISP) – Telkom do this but you can easily use someone else
• Generally, this is the cheapest, fastest solution.

You can buy a certain amount of data that you can download (called a capped account) and you usually pay per Gigabyte (GB, gig). Best deal I know about here is:

1. Telkom line with ADSL activated (any speed – 384k (slow) or 512k (a bit faster) or 4096k (also called 4 Meg)
   (fast)) but with AfriHost as your ISP (R29 per GB – no long term contract)

2. Updated – WebAfrica left me a comment below that they’ve got a better deal – you can get 1GB for R59 but then top up at R15 per GB which means that if you are buying 5GB its cheaper to buy their 1GB option and then top-up to 5GB. Note – top-up prices change rapidly – notice that the WebAfrica price for 4GB per month is R199 – so even that is more expensive than their own 1GB deal topped up to 5GB – which tells me to keep a careful eye on this.

Or you can pay a fixed monthly fee and download as much as you liked (this is an uncapped account). Best deals:

• Telkom line with ADSL activated (any speed – 384k (slow) or 512k (a bit faster) or 4 Meg
  (fast) but with:
  1. AfriHost as your ISP – R197 per month
  2. MWeb as your ISP – R219 per month (they have ads on TV you might have seen – bigger marketing budget than AfriHost)

Generally an uncapped account is good where you have multiple people accessing the account and don’t want to worry about how quickly your cap is going to be used up. Uncapped accounts generally don’t deliver quite the same performance as a capped account.

Shaped versus un-shaped accounts. The bandwidth for shaped accounts is dynamically managed by the ISP. They will typically throttle file-sharing programs like bittorrent. If you are not planning to use bittorrent or other high-demand applications, you are probably OK with a shaped account. If you don’t know what those are then you aren’t planning to use them!

3G / Wireless / HDSPA / WiMAX and other funky acronyms

Important points:

• This is when you connect through your cellphone network – just like browsing the internet on your phone
• You don’t need to be tied to a Telkom line
• You do need decent signal so you can use this anywhere you can pick up a decent signal
• Cellphone reception isn’t sufficient, you must be able to pick up 3G / EDGE / HSDPA
• You will connect your laptop or computer to a device (dongle, cellphone) that will connect to the internet wirelessly (just like the difference between Telkom phones and cellphones)

Generally this is the more flexible option giving you access in many different places but is more expensive and slower. It can be a good idea to have a 3G account as a backup for time when you are either on the road or when your other account is down for any reason.

Best deal I know about:

1. MTN cheapest rates for data bundles and best out-of-bundle rates .

My Personal Approach

To start off with (back in 2007) I didn’t want to be tied to Telkom for a long-term contract. Telkom doesn’t feel to me like the provider that’ll give you the best deal, service or most innovative products. I had Telkom install my phone line on a Closer 4 package which includes ADSL and the ADSL modem but with no service provider specified. I knew from previous experience that most of my internet usage will be from a single location and so a mobile solution wasn’t necessary.

I have the slowest ADSL account (384k). I must admit that I cannot see why anyone would buy the middle speed ADSL account (512k), its only a little bit faster but at double price because the fastest option (4Meg) is only a bit more expensive than 512k but is 8 times faster (max speed). Here are the current Telkom monthly prices with the speed increase:

• 384k – R152 per month
• 512k – R326 per month: 2.14 times more expensive but only 1.33 times faster than 384k
• 4096k – R413 per month: 2.71 time more expensive but 10.66 times faster than 384k and 8 time faster than 512k

You are not getting the bang for your buck with the 512k deal.

Next you need to choose an ISP. I chose Web Africa as my ISP to start off with. They had a pay-as-you-go option (for R70 per gig at the time), no sign-up fees, roll-over, auto top-up, no contract to tie you in and I had heard good things. At the time this was a pretty good deal. I was happy with this for quite a while.

Then SEACOM came along (2009), ICASA had to allow more people into the market and we finally started to see potential competition.

I had used Web Africa for a couple of years so I had a good idea of what my monthly internet usage was like. This really helps when deciding if you need a capped or uncapped line. I really like the advice given on the AfriHost website about choosing which is best for you – it works really well if you know your usage.

AfriHost offered a R29 per gig deal with no long term contract. As I had no contract with Web Africa I could easily switch and try it out for one month and if I didn’t like it just go back to Web Africa. The Afrihost option works really well for me. My typical internet usage is 5 gig per month so on Web Africa thats a bit more than R300 per month for my data. On AfriHost I get that for R145 with a simple top-up option if I need more.

I would like to go to a 4096k line as a number of websites I use (mostly google services) have issues with the speed at times but then would probably like an uncapped line too which then increases the cost significantly. A capped account keeps my 384k option faster than it would be if I chose an uncapped 384k option – which I have considered but I can’t afford my connection to be any slower.

If I upgrade my speed I will probably still stick with a capped account for a while to see if the increased speed really changes what I do on the net and help me decide if I really need an uncapped account

The idea of testing crowdsourcing against a more traditional design process came up last year (you can read about it here) and we decided to do an experiment as we needed new covers for the two sets of Free High School Science Texts (FHSST) textbooks.

The crowdsourced covers from 99Designs came in first (featured in this blog post):

Here are the full sets of covers for you to compare (you can leave your opinions about which win in the comments if you like):

Grade 10

Grade 11

Grade 12

Results

To be honest, I prefer the crowdsourced Physical Science covers but, in the interests of full disclosure, I managed that process. I am quite happy with the Mathematics covers. If we had had different designers as part of either process the results could have been different so this is certainly not a definite test with a control group but a little subjectivity makes for better coffee-time debate.

Obviously, the key thing to an end product you can live with is how you manage the process no matter which route you go. I have discovered I am very bad at working with an individual designer on a single project. I find it difficult to articulate what I want and what it is that I like and don’t like. These things make me a difficult client, although I feel this is mitigated slightly by the fact that I’m aware of it.

99Designs competitions are more tolerant of my choices and I feel that some designers seem to be able to figure wear I’m going based on what I rate designs and what designs I eliminate. I’ve started to standardise my own process for running competitions on 99Designs.

Competition

• The competition benefits from designers competing and feeding off each other – if you run a blind contest (where designers cannot see each others entries) you’ll lose out on the complex feedback between different design ideas and will basically be running about 30 individual design processes, requiring a lot more feedback and time. If you’re a bad client (like myself) that struggles to give good feedback this will really be difficult.
• For the first 3 days don’t give a rating higher than 3 stars – no matter how much you like the design. Immediately after launching the competition make a comment to this effect otherwise designers will get unhappy. They’ll grumble but live with it if they know it is your policy. If you don’t comment and do it they’ll just think you’re being difficult. You may well find something you really think you like in the first 48 hours but those strong, early contenders have always faded out as the feedback starts to take place.
• Provide feedback often – everyday – the competition only lasts 7 days but will take a couple of hours a day. If you don’t put effort into getting a design you like why should the designers – they don’t have to live with it.
• Prepay the contest – then 99Designs holds the money – you can still get it back but many designers won’t even consider participating if the competition isn’t prepaid. If you are serious about getting a design and have a budget then prove it.
• Once there are a couple of days left AND some designs you could live with – guarantee the contest – this way you can’t get the money back and must choose a winner – but its an added incentive to the designers to get involved. Many of the best seem to wait until the last 48 hours before entering.
• If designs conflict with the brief – eliminate them – and comment to that effect. Don’t let them hang around. If you hate it – eliminate! The competition feeds on what doesn’t get eliminated and on what gets rated highly.
• Give designers you rate individual feedback on their design – not in the general comments section. Don’t pick an individual designers idea and ask everyone to work on something like that.
• Put general feed back or changes to brief in general comments section.
• Don’t be put out if they moan a bit about your poor design choices, it is your design content after all. If they mail you privately just say that you are following the rules and they should go through the competition page – do NOT argue with them about design, especially not privately. Keep it on the competition page.

Brief (this is for a logo design competition)

Give yourself reasons to eliminate the rubbish easily by including things like:

• no drop shadows
• no gradients
• no 3D effects
• no stock images
• no proprietary fonts (otherwise you have to purchase)
• at most 2 colours (maybe 3
• logo must scale down
• logo must work in B&W
• should be balanced
• colour logo must be presented on white background (if they start
  using textured backgrounds to make the logo look good it is hard to
  compare etc.)

Thats all before you even say anything about what you are looking for. You can easily find much more comprehensive lists for rules for logo design competitions with a quick search online.

Then tell them what you want and include:

• project elevator pitch and link to site or descriptive material if
  you have.

• icon and/or word together
• ideas of colours if you have any
• whether icon should stand on its own
• ideas of fonts

Make sure you ask for:

• Colour version
• B&W version
• Vector files (I’d ask for .ai and .svg files)

I think that crowdsourcing is also a lot more fun than dealing with a single designer and you really do see a lot of different concepts in a very short space of time. I’m sure there is an argument to be made that a longer process might lead a more mature result but I’m sure a counter-argument exists built on intensity and focus for the person running the competition. Ultimately, as with everything in life, you have to make your own decisions and live with them. Luckily taking a chance on a logo for $500 isn’t very risky and worth a shot. The more you pay the more attention you get but for $500 for a logo design I am barely able to keep up with my day job and the competition.

I’ve just completed an updated, and hopefully, improved presentation on the functionality of the FullMarks website. It takes the form of a walk-through tutorial demonstrating how simple the site is to use. I don’t think any further explanation is required, please take a look and if you like it spread the word about the existence of FullMarks:

Neels van der Westhuizen and I met with Mothusi Sebogwa and Jors de Ridder from the North West Education Department On Wednesday and Thursday last week (9th and 10th June) to discuss what the next steps would be in our collaboration this year would be.

We spent time just brainstorming and discussing ideas, challenges and opportunities with some of the main topics being:

• FullMarks – Siyavula’s open on-line assessment bank for exam questions and answers
• Gathering and reporting on exam performance in the North West Province
• Additional subject English for mother tongue Foundation Phase learners
• Translation of Siyavula resources in to Tswana for Foundation Phase learnersPresentation to the principals and distribution of the DVDs with Siyavula workbooks
• Pilot with the workbooks in Grade 5

In the end we are going to help them prepare a plan for a Grade 5 pilot of the openly licensed workbooks made available through Siyavula and prepare a plan for the use of FullMarks to assist with their systemic assessment activities. I captured some thoughts on the pilot in this vlog:

North West Province Pilot Ideas from Mark Horner on Vimeo.

We have just finished helping the HOD Science at Bishops Diocesan College, Keith Warne, put all of his 200+ powerpoint presentations for the teaching of Grade 8-12 Science online. They are all freely available to view, use, download and modify! Here I have embedded his most popular one (over 120 views in 2 weeks) as an example:

Why do this, well ….

We find that many educators are willing to share content. I think that a willingness to share is a fundamental part of being a good teacher, isn’t that what teaching is actually all about. At the risk of getting somewhat distracted, I would even say that being a good teacher is about much more than just sharing knowledge/information but also in sharing in the identification, development and achievement of potential and dreams (Woah – it’s early!).

However, when faced with the prospect of sharing online they feel a little overwhelmed. There are a few obvious contributing factors some of which we can address and which I’ll list here:

• they don’t find a critical mass of content they can use online so their expectations about what is good enough to share haven’t been normalised;
• they don’t know the “best” place to share because they’ve not found much useful stuff and the internet is big;
• they seem to feel obliged to share everything, especially when they don’t see a critical mass of content in their subject area online; and
• they have too much stuff to share and its not well organised.

These are all legitimate concerns but the very size and nature of the internet and how people can collaborate online addresses them all:

• they don’t find a critical mass of content they can use online so their expectations about what is good enough to share haven’t been normalised; Nobody is forced to consume your content, allow them to decide if it is good enough or useful for them
• they don’t know the “best” place to share because they’ve not found much useful stuff and the internet is big; There is no best place to share it, so long as it is open, discoverable and has reasonable meta-data the internet search tools will find it and people will be able to use it
• they seem to feel obliged to share everything, especially when they don’t see a critical mass of content in their subject area online; The internet and many sites are some one of the best demonstrations of the “whole being greater than the sum of the parts”, look at Wikipeda and watch Clay Shirky’s Web2.0 Expo talk (transcript here if you don’t want to download a video) – I highly recommend it! and
• they have too much stuff to share and its not well organised. Start small because sharing content online will help get it organised, backed up and reviewed!

For Siyavula we really want to help get active participation going, not just consumption of content we’ve uploaded, and we’ve discovered a few things already:

• the content we’ve uploaded to Connexions does get viewed a lot;
• we really do receive feedback, testimonials and questions; and
• if content is uploaded in the authors’ name they will maintain it.

So, with the help of Upfront Systems, we decided to support some teachers sharing their content under the condition that:

• the content is uploaded to whichever of the following is most appropriate:
• FullMarks,
• Connexions, or
• Slideshare which now supports slides and videos,
• the content is licensed openly, and
• the content is uploaded under an account in their name.

This ensures that we slowly move towards critical mass in a few places, the content can be remixed and that feedback, questions and testimonials goes to the original author who is best equipped to respond. The last point is very important to me, if we want teachers to start connecting online then we must ensure that they can do so without going through any intermediaries. This point is driven home every time I receive feedback or a question on one of the Siyavula modules uploaded to Connexions because I am not the person best equipped to respond to a content/curriculum query and we have missed an opportunity to connect two educators.

A very quick note, there is no review process or special selection regarding who we work with, we started with Keith Warne because he gave up a day of his time to come to a workshop we ran and happened to have all his content with him on a memory stick and gave it to us. We seized the opportunity. There is more content from other teachers and other schools on the way and if you want would like some help getting your content online just let me know.

I’m really happy to report that we’re moving on OpenPress again. The design competition for the information site was held on 99designs recently and we’ve selected the winner.

The info website design will be based on this entry from the competition:

The site design.

The site will be available in the next week or two. For those of you who aren’t sure what the site is all about you can run through this slide show (best in full screen mode so you can read the speech bubbles):

On Saturday I noticed some dramatic headlines about a war involving DSTV in South Africa. Turns out it is a price war between DSTV and the new pay-TV operator. I’ve clearly been drinking too little coffee because I didn’t even know we were getting another operator in the pay-TV space. For the record we do now have one, TopTV.

What is even more AMAZING is that TopTV and DSTV are actually competing, TopTV came out with a number of bouquet options that undercut DSTV and suddenly DSTV reduce prices and increase their bouquet offerings. Excellent for consumers!

This is precisely what you would expect in a free market, competition gives the consumers more options and, possibly, better, cheaper options. As a South African though, you should be surprised to see this actually happening. We have MANY cellphone operators in South Africa and yet there is no competition at all! All of their pricing structures are still based firmly on daylight robbery, especially SMS charges.

I didn’t actually want to moan about cellphone operators, we have many experts on that in South Africa, I wanted to make a suggestion to DSTV. No, not TopTV, primarily because they don’t show the rugby. I still only have MNET, I want DSTV but I’d like the part that I will watch not the bazillion channels that irritate me.

My suggestion is: Don’t construct random bouquets that don’t make anyone happy, rather assign a points value to each channel and then sell bouquets of points and allow your customers to choose which channels make up their points quota. I know that this is technically feasible.

For example, I am only interested in watching MNET and Supersport. I would buy the cheapest points bouqet that would allow me to that. Now under the current scheme I would have to buy the most expensive DSTV bouquet – which I will not do as I am paying way too much for the two or three channels I will watch.

Clearly this is a very selfish suggestion, I want to see all the rugby and I don’t want to pay the premium fee but if I am not alone then there may be more profit to be made in allowing customers real flexibility in what channels make up their bouquet by adopting a points system, I would certainly sign up.

Just a suggestion but I think it might be quite popular. Any marketing campaign benefits from being able to honestly say that the customers needs come first.

For the Siyavula project we partnered with Connexions as our online content platform (some of the reasons can be found here). As part of this partnership we try to do more than use Connexions as a repository but also support the continuous development of the repository through sourcing more content and helping enhance technical offering as much as possible. There are always many potential avenues for development in any software project and we’ve been trying to help on those that make life easier for teachers in South Africa to be more effective and efficient when using the site.

One area that has been flagged by a number of people, not just our teachers at workshops, is that the authoring side of the site can be very slow at times. Some people just say that it is because the site is built on Plone but that isn’t fair so, to support our teachers, the broader Connexions community and the Connexions Consortium, I commissioned Upfront Systems to do a performance analysis of the authoring side of the site.

Before we get into details, the bottom-line is that Upfront Systems have shown that there are massive potential performance improvements (in some cases 5 times faster) for Connexions on the authoring side and analysed what it will take to implement them. I estimate that the total cost of implementing the specification is $7500.

This should make it a lot easier to raise the money needed to implement the fixes as we know where the problem lies, we have a detailed specification on how to fix it and have a proper analysis of the expected improvements so funders know what their return on investment will be.

The Gory Details As Reported on the Rhaptos Mailing List

Vlogging from Mark Horner on Vimeo.

The posts about the last 3 workshops (first post here) in the North West Province are long overdue and so I’ve decided to consolidate them into a single post.

For those only interested in the big picture it’s fair to say that all the workshops were very successful! All the workshops were intended to be two days long and were held at ATKV Buffelspoort which turned out to be a great venue for us.

All participants (approximately 60 per workshop) were engaged, enthusiastic and lively right until the end. The feedback we received was excellent with participants really enjoying both the community/group psychology side as well as the technical training. The level of engagement was so high that in all sessions participants were left asking for more but we had to cut things off as we just ran out of time or would have had to sacrifice our program which covered:

• challenges and needs in the North West province,
• workbook review,
• Siyavula and OERs introduction,
• Connexions introduction,
• communities of practice,
• group dynamics with introductions to edge, rank and containment,
• using Connexions to create accounts, workgroups and upload content from Word correctly, and
• brainstorming around needs, issues and ideas for taking things forward.

This left all advisors with a clear idea of how, in our work to support teachers and curriculum/subject advisors to be more effective, we adopt an approach that focuses on the use of Open Educational Resources, which immediately allows for the re-packaging, contextualisation and improvement of educational resources, by communities of practice, which supports load-sharing, professional development, empowerment and the development of a sense of belonging for the participants.

The advisors also identified practical ways that they could use the resources, tools and concepts in their work, identified potential challenges they could face, shared ideas about how to overcome those challenges and gave us great feedback on what challenges stand in the way of complete, province-wide adoption of the ideas.

We’ve had an opportunity to establish a superb relationship with the curriculum/subject advisors and give them enough information to get started as well as lay a solid foundation for any future work in the province.

Although each workshop began with the same plan they didn’t all turn out to be identical and so each one deserves some discussion.

Workshop 2 – 4 & 5^th March 2010

The Foundation Phase and Arts and Culture advisors were the primary attendees at the second workshop and made this our liveliest workshop with the most arts and culture in terms of singing and dancing at the workshop.

All the photos from the workshop, taken by Quinton Davis, are online – click here to see them.

Guests

• Dr. Johlene de Villiers, who is helping start a senior phase science club with teachers from the towns of Sutherland, Fraserburg, Williston and Carnarvon in the Northern Cape Province.
• Nico Sauer, Subject Advisor Senior Phase Physical Science Namakwa Region, Northern Cape Department of Education, who is working with Johlene in her efforts.
• Susie Crossman from the Royal Bafokeng Institute who is coordinating their efforts on the science education front.

We invite guests to attend and participate in our workshops because it allows them to experience the blend of communities of practice, technology and OERs we are providing and is much more effective than any explanation we can give them. The guests we invite are potential partners, practitioners or advisors. We didn’t have any guests at the first workshop as we were still finding our feet and the workshop details were finalised quite close to the actual workshop date.

Changes

In this workshop we were able to complete the Word uploading to our standalone server (this hadn’t been possible at the first workshop) and all participants went through the process of constructing a document, importing it into our stand-alone server, and publishing the content.

Some participants had the opportunity to import the content into workgroups that they had formed earlier in the day, demonstrating the technical solution for having a restricted, collaborative workspace online where discussions can happen and content can be imported/created before being released to the broader community.

Workshop 3 – 18 & 19^th March 2010

For this workshop the Life Orientation, Technology and Social Sciences advisor joined us at Buffelspoort. This workshop was the hardest one for our team as we were involved in a relatively serious car accident just outside OR Tambo late the night before on the way to Buffelspoort and so the team had very little sleep. Thankfully the participants provided the energy and the excitement for the team and the workshop went off well despite some very tired facilitators.

All the photos from the workshop, taken by Quinton Davis, are online – click here to see them.

Guests

• Patrick and Jo Dixon, Patrick is the founder of LearnAid Publishing in the United Kingdom.
• Elizabeth Meyer from the Centre for Education Development at the University of the Free State.
• Marlin van Heerden

The particularly exciting thing about having representatives of LearnAid at the event was the opportunity to allow the advisors to meet someone who really has leveraged the benefits of OERs that we preach to them. We were able to show professionally laid out derivatives works of the content we’ve made available. LearnAid publishing has used both Siyavula and FHSST content in their handbooks. This really drives home the power of open licensing.

Changes

For the third workshop we restructured the flow of sessions to better leverage the momentum from the community sessions, before we had inserted some technical training to ensure that people didn’t get too tired of working in one area, but the groups generated so much momentum and energy that we withheld the technical training till later in the day which worked really well. It is hard to know up front how engaged and focused a group will be after 2 hours focused on one topic and we try to go where the energy is in our workshops as much as possible because it is an indicator of the passion and needs of the participants.

We also modified the introductory process and swapped the speed dating for a individual introductions in the plenary session. We asked participants to tell us not only who they were and which district they were from but also what their expectation, if any, of the workshop was. This worked really well as everyone’s voice was heard and a wide range of issues were raised.

Workshop 4 – 25 & 26^th March 2010

Advisors for Natural Sciences and Economics and Management Studies were the participants at the final workshop as well as some Physical Science advisors wanting to learn more about the FHSST content.

All the photos from the workshop, taken by Quinton Davis, are online – click here to see them.

This workshop was the most intense group of participants and we spent a lot of time discussing very technical issues of both the site and group dynamics. Again participants requested more time for all aspects of the program.

I’ve included a complete list of the responses we received during the introductory exercise when we ask everyone to introduce themselves and tell us why they are here and what they expect to get out of the workshop. This exercise gives people a voluntary opportunity to put their cards on the table and we get some really honest responses. This is great because it means that our team really knows their expectations – you’ll see that there is a lot of honesty included in the responses and it is not just a case of everyone towing some party line. We get a chance to put some processes in place to address them where there are, for example, logistical concerns. This sets the tone for the workshop and gets us off to a great start.

“Sharpen my skills and bring better skills to other people.”
“Get some material to support our schools.”
“Be developed technologically.”
“Catch a mouse.”
“Learn a lot.”
“Access information easily from computer.”
“I’ve researched portfolio assessments, found a lot on the web and thought this was a good opportunity to go into “internet conferencing.”"
“What is the workshop all about?”
“99% don’t have internet. How to access those portal with a lot of information on science. Hope program can be extended into most syllabus areas.”
“Something’s going to be opened up – Siyavula.”
“I just wanted to get out of the office.”
“I’ve developed grade 4 material. I’m not going to type and distribute yet because I’ve heard of Siyavula and going to the workshop first.”
“Jors said I would meet Mark Shuttleworth. [Once this was found out not to be the case...] Perhaps Siyavula will open the door to Mark Shuttleworth.”
“Normally we have to work for a workshop. This time I want to take something away.”
“I never wanted to be a teacher, but my classmates told me to be a teacher. I didn’t want to come to this workshop, but my colleagues told me to be here. [When asked if the was a good teacher she said that she's been told that she is]”
“I’m here to visit the area. Be able to use information from the internet.”
“There are no physical science educators at some schools.”
“I heard about the workshop from someone else who attended the workshop – they said it was good”
“Given lack of support from the department, and lack of resources, I hope this can inspire educators to be creative.
“I’ve heard a lot of things about it [Siyavula] and am very interested.”
“A lot of good things were said about this workshop and I did some marketing for the workshop.”
“I’ve never heard of Siyavula in my life. [When all participants were asked this by Helene, a few others put up their hands to indicate that this was the case for them too].”
“I’m interested to see about the grass roots vs top down approach, and how Siyavula tackles this.”
“Reputation of Siyavula from colleagues.”
“Far, far behind technologically – I hope this is a catch up program, and hope to come out a better person.”
“Colleagues were here and I was told “This is one of the workshops you can’t miss!”"
“Here to meet Shuttleworth as well. Don’t know what the workshop is about. Hopefully sharpen skills, gain more.”
“Efficiently help the education system to be more.”
“Not very sure why I’m here. Was told they teach you how to open a document. I want to learn something that I don’t know – or something I know – waiting for that wow moment!”
“Some material seen from Jors – inspired.”
“Heard that facilitators are good. Like hardworking people – don’t like lazy people.”
“Explore new things I don’t know. Viva Siyavula!”
“Jors said if I don’t do it now, he will kill me.”
“Jors. Subject advisors must know more than teachers. Improve in a technological way.”
“Want to be more technologically advanced.”
“Inspired by Jors.”
“I was lost – that’s why I’m late. I hope the workshop can benefit me. Share info with educators”
“Here out of curiosity – develop.”
“Heard about Siyavula a lot – curious.

The final session is a discussion of how to take things forward, what people can commit to and what challenges there are. Some of the comments made were documented and here is a list:

Select educators that are computer literate and introduce Siyavula to them. Introduce a buddy system i.e. each of them will introduce one other person.

Cellphone, simulation. A lot of people are new to all this. Need to spend time playing with the website i.e. getting comfortable with the website ourselves [as curriculum advisors].

We need to set up meetings.

We feel empowered, excited and tired.

We need to get more comfortable with Siyavula.

Most educators are not computer literate.

Although one person may have access to a laptop, they don’t necessarily have exclusive use of it.

I see the potential, but there are big constraints.

We need to kept being reminded about Siyavula – we need to be prodded
[response: it is important to remember that this is a voluntary thing]

Most of felt we could use it ourselves.

We would show it to our children.
[A lot of people in the audience agreed]

Some websites are blocked [because of firewalls / proxy servers]. Can you please make sure that this is rectified for the Siyavula website?
[response: we'll sort that out]

We would feel more comfortable if the DoE gave us a mandate to be able to use Siyavula – and put time into it instead of other things.

Thanks to Mark, the Shuttleworth Foundation and Jors

Much has been spent on the psychological part – more time should be spent on the technical part.

I didn’t like the time spent on the technical part.

I really enjoyed the psychology part.

Different strokes for different folks – maybe you guys can find out the level of technical competence beforehand.
[response: it varies and we need to choose how to spread the time of the workshop]

Ultimately the participants always hung around until the end, were lively right up until the closing session and were all enthusiastic about the project and engaged in the process. I thought I’d close this post with a photo of, arguably, our most enthusiastic participant: