Teacher's Monthly » Literacy

Creating High Impact Learning Environments in Low Income Areas

Guest Author — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:27:28 +0000

Numeric is a South African based non-profit company interested in creating high impact learning environments in low income areas. As the name suggests, we’re focused primarily on mathematics and in particular on how Khan Academy can be used to generate strong learning outcomes.

In South Africa, as in many other countries around the world, there is a direct correlation between the quality of a child’s education and the ability of his/her family to afford that education. To illustrate this, we’ve plotted the average annual school fee paid by learners with the average university exemption rate (i.e. percentage of learners at a school that gain entry to university). Clearly there is a lot of work to be done before education is truly democratized!

Our model works as follows. We either set up or utilize existing computer labs in lower income areas to run Khan Academy programmes that are mapped to the South African CAPS curriculum. Learners on our programmes do Khan Academy for 3 hours each week (normally two 1.5 hour sessions). These sessions are facilitated by our coaches, typically young university-age students who come from the area itself. The formula is kids + coaches + khan academy.

Khan Academy does an enormous amount of the work for us. It provides the curriculum, the worksheets, the lessons (videos) and the grading! This frees up time for our coaches to play games, introduce interesting maths puzzles and applied problems, and generally to spend more time in small group or one-on-one instruction.

One of the major issues we face in South Africa is bandwidth constraints. Data is expensive and internet speeds are sluggish. To get around this problem, we’ve taken the videos offline and built them into an offline video browser. This allows kids to browse and watch the videos offline and do the exercises online. This effectively reduces the bandwidth requirements by 90-95%. We thus do a hybrid Khan Academy – exercises online, videos offline. While this hybrid model works well for peri-urban areas, it is less effective in rural areas. As such, we are excited about the development of KA Lite.

One of the other issues facing South African school learners in respect of Khan Academy is relevance. There is a lot of material on Khan Academy. If you were to string together every Simpson’s episode ever produced one after the other, and then triple that, that’s how much video content is available on the Khan Academy site. To make it a little easier for South African learners to find what they’re looking for, we’ve mapped the content to our local curriculum and made this available on our website.

Like we always say to our coaches, the tragedy in South Africa is not so much that kids don’t want to learn. It’s that some kids do want to learn, but can’t. Our goal is to provide them with this educational outlet.

Written by Andrew Einhorn

From the early days of playing Maths24 and making number patterns out of the speedometer reading on his mom’s Opel Kadett, Andrew has been passionate about numbers. He founded Numeric in October 2011 when he set up his first Khan Academy pilot program in Makhaza, Khayelitsha. He spends most of his time thinking about how to make Khan Academy useful, accessible and relevant to South African learners.

TinyTap App Lets Kids Create Customized iPad Books & Games

Adrian Marnewick — Mon, 28 May 2012 08:35:09 +0000

Written by Sarah Perez

TinyTap is a new iPad application designed for kids which introduces a different angle on the “record-your-own-voice” storybooks craze, by offering a playable book or game you and your kids can customize with your own photos, camera shots, music, narration, and more. The resulting creations can then be shared with family and friends. And, for a little inspiration, the built-in TinyTap store offers a collection of pre-made games which kids can customize with their own voice and actions.

The app is targeted at 4+ and up, so I couldn’t really enlist my in-house kid app beta tester (aka my 2-year old kid) to give it a rundown. But in testing it myself, I have to admit that I’m not 100% convinced they’ve nailed it on the user interface. For example, some of things you can add to your story, like photos and questions, are centered as thumbnails within the application’s design dashboard. Meanwhile, the add music option is oddly hovering above next to another add photo button, the sharing option and an edit button. It’s a layout that doesn’t quite make sense.

That’s too bad because if TinyTap’s workflow was more streamlined and simplified, it would be easier for them to add additional elements to the story/game design process.

That being said, TinyTap is still a lot better than much of the kids’ apps crapware out there in the iTunes App Store. And it’s hard not to fall in love with the concept at the very least. Instead of burning up brain cells with the mind-numbing games out there, TinyTap enables kids to become game creators, not just players.

The idea immediately reminded me of Kodu, Microsoft’s visual programming language for kids, which allows them to create PC and Xbox games – and more importantly, helps them to start thinking like a programmer. But Kodu is not only for different types of platforms, it’s for a slightly older child, too.

The bigger concept with TinyTap is that it could potentially become an entry-level tool for game development, which starts kids young, allowing them to wrap their little minds around the “if/then/else” concepts that go into process of game creation. The building blocks are already there: e.g., if you touch the nose in the picture when asked, you’re right and can go to the next question, but if you get it wrong, the game says “try again.”

There are a ton of DIY app building tools for adults, so it’s great to see someone thinking about building a platform for kids, too.

TinyTap is an Israeli-based company, co-founded in January 2012 by UX designers Yogev Shelly (formerly of Rounds.com) and another (who can’t disclose his name right now, as he’s still employed elsewhere). The team is based in Tel-Aviv and is currently looking to raise.

The app is a free download in iTunes here.

Article originally published at TechCrunch.com.

ChalkStar – downloadable worksheets for primary school teachers

Adrian Marnewick — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 11:42:37 +0000

ChalkStar is a brand new online initiative to help primary school teachers save time and improve lesson quality.

GetWings, an online education incubator, is proud to announce the launch of ChalkStar.com, an innovative new online platform for teachers teaching grades R – 12. ChalkStar is a supportive online community that develops new bundles of professional, top-quality worksheets every week for use in grade R to 3 classrooms. The community includes a market place for teachers to sell their own worksheets, and a worksheet-authoring tool that makes it easy for teachers to develop their custom worksheets. All community services are currently free while it is in its beta testing phase.

Once out of beta phase ChalkStar members will pay a monthly subscription of R100 (50% launch special available to Teacher’s Monthly readers!) to gain access to a wide range of tools and services. Every week, members can download a new set of themed worksheets based on current affairs for the subjects of math, science and English literacy. Students will not only benefit from the structured and simple educational outcomes, but also get to learn more about the world and events around them – for example, the worksheets released over Bastille Day had a decidedly French theme and included exercises linked to Bastille Day for math, science and English literacy. The worksheets are professionally designed according to best teaching practices and provide everything a teacher needs to stimulate classroom learning in the elementary grades.

ChalkStar also provides members with access to a worksheet marketplace: teachers can upload and sell their existing materials, or purchase specific worksheets from their peers, for a flat fee of R30 (authoring teachers keep 75% of the sale price). A forthcoming addition is a worksheet-authoring tool, which will allow teachers to tailor make their own worksheets, based on the fundamental principles that ChalkStar employs. Dan Bailey, the project lead for ChalkStar, explains “Designing worksheets is hugely time consuming. In addition to the bundles of worksheets we design for members each week, we are also working on a worksheet-authoring tool. This tool will allow teachers to create their own worksheets using dozens of best-practice templates. We will be launching this new tool in September 2011.

Designed to be simple and to allow teachers to earn income from their expert knowledge, ChalkStar is committed to supporting the over 250,000 school teachers in South Africa. Worksheets are the staple of elementary school education, because they provide simple and fun learning exercises while making it easy for the teacher to structure and assess outcomes. ChalkStar is the next step in improving the delivery and quality of these worksheets.

ChalkStar is free to all subscribers during its beta testing phase. The full service, with applicable subscription fee, will launch at the end of September 2011.

To try out the service or to find out more, visit www.ChalkStar.com.

Can SMS help teens with writing and spelling?

Adrian Marnewick — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 14:05:59 +0000

The following article was written by Bill Ferriter and originally published at The Tempered Radical.

One of my parents dropped me a line today, asking for a bit of advice about her daughter—who, because of a bit of reading reluctance has always struggled with spelling proficiency.

Specifically, she was wondering whether or not texting might be a good forum for spelling practice for her daughter—and if so, whether cell phones with autocorrect become a crutch for kids who struggle with spelling.

Interesting questions, aren’t they? And they’re right up my alley, considering I can’t spell to save my life!

(Didn’t know that about me, did you?)

It’s true. Even though I’m a professional writer who just finished his third book and his 500th blog entry here on the Radical, spelling has never been a strong suit of mine.

That bing siad—sorry, had to do it—here’s a few thoughts on texting, spelling and teens.

Texting certainly provides dozens of new opportunities for kids to write.

Let’s face it: Us adult types have been pretty skeptical about texting, haven’t we? Find me one parent or teacher that believes texting has value as a teaching/learning tool and I’ll find you fifty who think texting is the root cause of the decline of Western Civilization as we know it.

Heck, a few years back, the Librarian of Congress went as far as to argue that texting is leading to the death of the sentence.

That’s hardcore.

But it is impossible to deny that texting has provided dozens of new writing opportunities for our kids. After all, the average teen sends 50 texts a day—a number that rises to 80 when you look at just the teen girls who are texting.

Now I know what you’re thinking: It’s difficult to see much writing value in messages that are full of text-speak. Can we really count the six “LOLs” and “ROTFLs” sent per day as writing opportunities?

The answer is yes—because no matter how short-hand-ed-ly written a message is, it is still an opportunity for writing that our kids didn’t have back in the good ol’ text-free days of yesteryear.

Did YOU write 50+ messages a day to anyone back when you were a teen or a tween?

Me neither.

But teens don’t see texting as a tool for writing.

Here’s the hitch: Our kids DON’T see texting as a tool for formal writing. Instead, texting is a tool for the kinds of informal conversations that the rest of us grown-up-types used to have on those things called landlines.

“Hey,” we’d say. “Whaddya’ doin’?”

“Nothin’.”

“Me neither”

“Bummer, dood.”

Transcribe a few of those conversations word for word, Mr. Library of Congress Man, and you’ll quickly discover that hormones and teen-aged-hood have been trying to kill articulate thought for a long, long while now!

Teens have never been particularly formal when interacting with their peers—whether that was on the rotary phones of the late 1970s or in the text messages of today.

That doesn’t mean that rotary phones and texting are automatically bad for the intellectual development of our kids, but it does mean that texting isn’t a natural way to encourage quality writing practices in today’s kids because that’s not how today’s kids see texting.

If we really want to use texting as a tool for meaningful writing instruction, we’re going to have to shift our students’ perception about the purposes of texting as a form of communication—and that shift might just allow us to take advantage of the most motivating forum for teenage writing ever seen.

But when was the last time that changing the way that teens communicate—that laying a layer of academics over the top of a tool that kids use almost exclusively for social purposes—was easy?

My guess: Never.

Creating meaningful writing opportunities out of texting requires specific tasks and, possibly, new audiences.

If I wanted to try to use texting as a tool for giving students opportunities to develop writing and spelling proficiency, I think I’d wind ‘em up on 25 word stories.

A fun Twitter project that I first learned about from Kevin Hodgson, 25 word stories are exactly what you think they are: Attempts to write complete stories in 25 words or less.

The 25 word limit is beautiful for lots of reasons. Perhaps most importantly to me as a professional writing teacher, 25 word stories require authors to be creative in their word choice and to craft pieces that force readers to rely on inferences to figure out what’s really going on.

Here’s a 25 word story I wrote yesterday. See how readers are left to wonder—what is the man dreaming about? What about his past was broken? How does he feel about bedtime? Will he ever reclaim his life?

For kids, 25 word stories are beautiful because they’re 25 words long! That’s infinitely more doable than the five-paragraph essays we’re asking them to write all the time, isn’t it?

25 word stories work a lot like brain teasers. When you’re limited to 25 words—or to the 160 characters allowed in one text message—you’ve got to puzzle a bit to get your piece just right. For a lot of kids, that mental puzzling is fun.

When my kids were done with their 25 word stories, I’d have ‘em text them to their friends—who could pretty easily respond with feedback. Suddenly, the audience for a text message becomes the audience for an interesting bit of writing.

And once the audience for a text message becomes the audience for an interesting bit of writing, spelling matters again.

By giving kids a specific, interesting task for the text messages that they’re writing, we can start to shift their perception of messaging as a forum for informal communication to messaging as a forum for sharing bits of interesting, well-developed thought.

Does that make sense?

One final thought: If I were a parent pushing my child in the direction of 25 word stories as content for text messages and she didn’t have any friends who were willing to play along, I’d create a Twitter account for her and start posting her stories there.

The writers posting their 25 word stories on Twitter take the practice seriously and give one another feedback all the time. Shifting audience might make short messaging more successful as a writing practice for kids whose friends just aren’t interested in trying something new.

Knowing how to spell isn’t essential—knowing how to identify errors and correct them is.

The short answer to my parent’s last question—do cell phones with autocorrect spelling features become crutches for kids—is a resounding yes.

If your goal is for your child to be a master speller on their own—like one of those kids on the National Spelling Bees at 3 AM on ESPN 2 in the middle of February—you should avoid autocorrect tools at all costs.

But here’s the thing: Most researchers will tell you that spellers move through developmental stages and that many adults will never get to the top levels of spelling ability no matter how many spelling lists they memorize in elementary school.

I’m living proof, y’all! Heck, when I write on the board in my classroom, the kids laugh hysterically at how mangled my words are.

What I tell them once they catch their breath and wipe the tears out of their eyes is that knowing how to spell isn’t essential. Instead, knowing how to identify—and then to correct—errors is what’s really essential.

Back in the day, knowing how to identify and then to correct errors was a chore, though. It involved all kinds of proofreading (I read my papers backwards to avoid being blinded by context) and phonemic awareness (I sounded out every word that was more than 3 letters for a long, long time).

Today, knowing how to identify and correct errors is way easier. Start by looking for the red lines. Then, right click on your mouse and find the correct spelling in the list that is automatically generated for you by the device you’re using.

Kids never had it so easy!

Sure, there are going to be times when spell check doesn’t work. There may even be times where you’re not able to access a device that spell checks and autocorrects—although that’s getting less and less likely for everyone working beyond the unplugged public school classroom where most devices are banned and/or broken.

But for the most part, I’m a big fan of taking advantage of tools that make me more efficient because I can use the time that I save on chores to do more interesting stuff.

When I can invest my mental energy into the content of a writing piece instead of into the drudgery of figuring out how to spell a million incorrect words, my work is more engaging and my mind is more engaged.

So whaddya’ think?

How important do you think spelling proficiency really is in today’s world? Are you an “autocorrect-makes-‘em-lazy” kind of guy or a “I-love-me-some-red-lines” kind of guy?

Have you ever thought about using texting as a tool for improving the writing and spellling proficiencies of your students? Why or why not?

Do you think we’re missing an opportunity when we don’t take advantage of texting as a forum for expression and meaningful communication? After all, our kids have certainly embraced it.

Yoza m-novel library proves its worth

Adrian Marnewick — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 07:26:55 +0000

On 22 August 2010 a new library of cellphone stories – also known as mobile novels or m-novels – was launched by the Shuttleworth Foundation as part of its m4Lit (mobiles for literacy) project. Yoza is the name of the m-novel library, which uses cellphones to support teen reading and writing. The m-novels are cool, interactive and free. Yoza is available on www.yoza.mobi and on MXit (go to Tradepost > MXit Cares > mobiBooks) on all WAP-enabled cellphones, as well as on Facebook (search for Yoza Cellphone Stories).

Steve Vosloo, founder of Yoza and fellow for 21st century learning at the Shuttleworth Foundation, says: “For the foreseeable future the cellphone, not the Kindle or iPad, is the ereader of Africa. Yoza aims to capitalise on that to get Africa’s teens reading and writing.”

The m4Lit project began in 2009 as a pilot initiative to explore whether and how teens in South Africa would read stories on their cellphones. Most of the reading and writing that happens on cellphones is of very short texts, e.g. SMSes and chat messages on MXit. The Shuttleworth Foundation published a story called Kontax in September 2009 – twenty pages in length – and actively invited reader participation through this longer content; cellphones are interactive after all. Readers could leave comments on chapters, vote in opinion polls related to the story and enter a writing competition. By the end of May 2010 another Kontax story had been published.

The uptake was tremendous. Since launch, the two stories have been read over 34 000 times on cellphones! Over 4 000 entries have been received in the writing competitions and over 4 000 comments have been left by readers on individual chapters. Many of the readers asked for more stories and in different genres. Encouraged by the high uptake of the stories and by these reader requests, the Shuttleworth Foundation decided to launch Yoza.

What are Yoza’s goals?

To get young people reading and writing:

Yoza’s goal is to get young people reading and writing, and in the ‘book-poor’ but ‘cellphone-rich’ context of South Africa, the phone is a viable complement and sometimes alternative to a printed book. If, as a country, we want our youth to read, then both books printed on paper and books on cellphones are needed. The paper versus pixels debate consistently takes up a lot of page space, but in a country with a severe literacy problem, it is necessary to move beyond that and focus on reading and writing, whatever the medium.

To create good reading material:

First and foremost, stories published on Yoza offer compelling, entertaining reading for teens in South Africa. The aim is to captivate teens and inspire them to catch the reading bug. To that end, an initial line up of appealing stories in different genres have been planned (see Yoza’s story line up below). Enjoying well-written stories by good authors is part of the Yoza experience. The m-novels are written in conventional language, with txtspeak only used when a character is writing or reading SMSes or instant message chats. Also included are prescribed school reading from the public domain.

To use cellphones to make reading material affordable and widely accessible:

There is a growing awareness around the impact that a lack of books has on literacy levels in South Africa. Books are scarce and prohibitively expensive for most South Africans. Stats show that 51% of households in South Africa do not own a single leisure book, while an elite 6% of households own 40 books or more. Only 7% of schools have functioning libraries.

What South Africa’s teens do have access to are cellphones, with stats indicating that 90% of urban youth have their own cellphone. The take up and interaction with the first two Kontax stories published in English and isiXhosa clearly demonstrates that cellphones are a viable platform for local teen reading and writing. There is no charge for the actual stories, but users do pay their mobile network operator for mobile data traffic. Images have been kept to a minimum to keep the mobile data charges low – they range from 5c to 9c per chapter, making Yoza m-novels a very affordable option for great reading material for teens.

To be “open”:

Part of Yoza’s success will be measured on the number of teens that read, enjoy and share its stories. The more, the better. For this reason stories are published under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike licence. This means that anyone can freely copy, distribute, display and remix the content, as long as they credit the original and subsequent authors.

The Praekelt Foundation was commissioned to develop the software platform that drives Yoza, and this too will be released as open-source software.

To grow the library of stories and create a community of readers:

Over the next six months the plan for Yoza is to build a library of cellphone stories of multiple genres that are available to teens not only in South Africa, but ultimately throughout Africa. Kontax has already been published in Kenya through MXit. Competitions with airtime prizes prompt readers to participate in the interactive questions at the end of chapters, keeping readers engaged and coming back for more.

Current story languages include English and isiXhosa, an Afrikaans story is being written, and ideally stories in all of the South African languages will ultimately be published on Yoza. The Shuttleworth Foundation encourages the public to get involved in translating the stories into local languages – “if you translate it we’ll gladly publish it.”

To reach sustainability:

While the Foundation is incubating the project, it will need to be sustainable from early next year. The project is actively looking for sponsors or partners to help make it sustainable.

What’s in the Yoza library?

Kontax, the flagship title about a group of four teenage friends in Cape Town. In trial publications, the first two instalments of this m-novel series were read 34 000 times in seven months! The Yoza library features all m-novels in the series, with a fourth sequel launching on 22 August. This series is written by Sam Wilson and Lauren Beukes of Clockwork Zoo.

Streetskillz is a brand new soccer series written by talented young writer and soccer fanatic Charlie Human. The first story – Golden Goal – launches on 22 August and is set in the month of the soccer World Cup. Unforgettable international soccer reality merges with a dramatic fictional street soccer competition in Du Noon township in Cape Town.

Sisterz is a sassy new series by local chic lit star Fiona Snyckers. On 22 August Latoya’s Secret launches straight into the depths of dark family secrets, the highs of friendship, school Pop Idols auditions, and the breath-stopping sensations of first love.

Confessions of a Virgin Loser by talented, thoughtful novelist Edyth Bulbring is the story of a Joburg boy steering his way through the complicated world of peer pressure, teenage sex and HIV/AIDS, while just trying to be a cool kid at school.

A Bicycle Ride through Lesotho by Duncan Guy – of Learn the News fame – tells the entertaining tale of riding through the Mountain Kingdom on a bicycle.

Yoza Classics is a section of its own, featuring a range of public domain titles. School prescribed work Macbeth is one of the first titles selected for Yoza Classics. The idea is not necessarily that teens will read the whole of Macbeth on their cellphones, but if they have to read Act 1; Scene 1 for homework and they don’t have a textbook, then they can do so on their phones.

Vosloo says: “We are looking to grow the library of stories as well as a vibrant community of young users who not only read the stories but participate in the commenting, reviewing and writing of them. We’re turning reading into a social, sharing experience.”

Parents and teachers – get involved

Encourage teens to read the stories, write comments and story reviews and enter the writing competitions. Bring Yoza into the classroom by using one of the stories as prescribed reading and have learners write assignments on it. Write a story for Yoza, or encourage your learners or child to submit a story at www.yoza.mobi/write. If they like it, they’ll publish it.

Free LITERACY tests and memos – Grade 3

Nadia Marnewick — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:55:36 +0000

Question papers with memos assessing LITERACY as per the Grade 3 curriculum are available here. They are available in both Afrikaans and English and can be used as class exercises or revision tools. They are filled with pictures and questions to make learning fun for kids!

These papers were created with a tool called XT. If you like them, see how they were made, click here.

To download these tests click on the links below.

Literacy:

XT – LITERACY Grade 3 – Alphabetical order

XT – LITERACY Grade 3 – Alphabetical order Memo

XT – LITERACY Grade 3 – Basic punctuation

XT – LITERACY Grade 3 – Basic punctuation Memo

XT – LITERACY Grade 3 – Names and places

XT – LITERACY Grade 3 – Names and places Memo

XT – LITERACY Grade 3 – Synonyms and Antonyms

XT – LITERACY Grade 3 – Synonyms and Antonyms Memo

Geletterdheid:

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 3 – Alfabetiese volgorde

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 3 – Alfabetiese volgorde Memo

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 3 – Basiese Leestekens

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 3 – Basiese Leestekens Memo

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 3 – Name en plekke

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 3 – Name en plekke Memo

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 3 – Sinonieme en Antonieme

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 3 – Sinonieme en Antonieme Memo

Free LITERACY tests and memos – Grade 2

Nadia Marnewick — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:39:38 +0000

Question papers with memos assessing LITERACY as per the Grade 2 curriculum are available here. They are available in both Afrikaans and English and can be used as class exercises or revision tools. They are filled with pictures and questions to make learning fun for kids!

These papers were created with a tool called XT. If you like them, see how they were made, click here.

To download these tests click on the links below.

Literacy:

XT – LITERACY Grade 2 – General Grammar

XT – LITERACY Grade 2 – General Grammar Memo

XT – LITERACY Grade 2 – Less, more most

XT – LITERACY Grade 2 – Less, more, most Memo

XT – LITERACY Grade 2 – Rhyming words

XT – LITERACY Grade 2 – Rhyming words Memo

XT – LITERACY Grade 2 – Verbs

XT – LITERACY Grade 2 – Verbs Memo

Geletterdheid:

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 2 – Algemene Taal

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 2 – Algemene Taal Memo

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 2 – Minder, meer, meeste

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 2 – Minder, meer, meeste Memo

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 2 – Woorde wat rym

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 2 – Woorde wat rym Memo

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 2 – Werkwoorde

XT – GELETTERDHEID Graad 2 – Werkwoorde Memo

Free LITERACY tests and memos – Grade 1

Nadia Marnewick — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:01:36 +0000

Question papers with memos assessing LITERACY as per the Grade 1 curriculum are available here. They are available in both Afrikaans and English and can be used as class exercises or revision tools. They are filled with pictures and questions to make learning fun for kids!

These papers were created with a tool called XT. If you like them, see how they were made, click here.

To download these tests click on the links below.