News, Information and Useful Links for Education from
the Chancellor Oppenheimer Library
Higher Education SA (HESA) chair, Theuns Eloff, addressed the Education Portfolio Committee during this week. The story on News24 highlighted the high drop-out rate, the poor preparedness of some students especially the poor reading and writing skills. Here is a link to the presentation itself, and as well as the minutes from the Parliamentary Monitoring Group.
Spotted on South Africa The Good News:
CSIR has launched a educational spelling game in the 11 official South African languages. The game, called OpenSpell, was created by researcher and linguist, Dr Madelaine Plauché and open source software developer Richard Carlson.
Quoting from the story
"The game consists of a simple interactive computer-based activity that can be set at three levels (easy, medium and hard). Feedback to learners is in the form of fun rewards or penalties.
The second component of the game allows tutors to edit the key board and record sounds. "Anyone can use the software to customise it to a language or dialect," Plauché explains. "
Download it from Madwiki. (It has been released under a Gnu General Public License (GPL) )
Announcement spotted on bizcommunity
" ... Launching shortly is an interactive tabloid for six-year-olds, My First Free 4 All. Direct from the Free 4 All stable, it is the baby brother of high school newspaper Free 4 All, and its sibling for senior primary school kids, Free 4 All Early Edition.
The
first issue will be distributed to 185 schools in the main metros in
June 2008. Every child in Grade 0 at participating schools will receive
their own copy to take home. "
The fledgling title is in line with
the thinking of the minister of education Naledi Pandor, who says that
“Grade 0 is the golden year - the year that defines whether the child
will be functionally literate.” This is the year when the child learns
to read, so he can later read to learn. "
The Nkosi Albert Luthuli Young Historians' Competition is a national oral history competition open to all learners from Grade 8 to Grade 11, and all history educators in secondary schools. The national finals takes place 1 - 4 October 2008. The competition is a joint project by South African History Online and the South African Department of Education.
The competition is open to all learners from Grade 8 to Grade 11 and all history educators in secondary schools.
Learners will be required to research and prepare a presentation or a documentary film or video on one of the following topics:Our unsung heroes: Investigate the life of a member of your community, showing, through oral history research, how the individual has shown leadership qualities and through commitment and dedication, made a difference to your community;
Investigate an example of local community struggle in your community against apartheid, in which the community came together to demonstrate their opposition to some apartheid government action that directly affected the local community. For example the Potato Boycotts in Mpumalanga or the Sekhukhuneland (Limpopo) revolt in the 1950’s of rural communities. Background on this community resistance can be found in the two volumes of The Road to Democracy in South Africa (SADET) that was distributed to schools. (Sekhukhuneland (volume 1) and the 1973 Durban strikes (volume 2)).
Investigate how the formation of the community-based organizations that were affiliated to the United Democratic Front affected members of your community by interviewing people who participated in its formation or various youth, women, student and other civic organization affiliates;
Investigate the re emergence of the labour movement that commenced with the Durban strikes of 1973 and the impact of working class mobilization on the community; or
Investigate the role played by members of your family and community in the South African war against Angola and other neighbouring states in the 1980s, whether in the South African National Defence Force or the liberation armies as South Africa commemorates the 20th anniversary of the defeat of the SADF at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 2008.
Investigate the history of your school through interviews with former learners, parents and other members of the community, focusing on what changes have taken place around education, particularly in terms of attitudes and organization.
(As there seem to be technical problems with posting links, go to http://www.sahistory.org.za/classroom/albertluthuli/history.htm for information about the competition, the FAQs, instructions on how to enter and last year's winners)
The UN Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) Institute of Statistics (http://www.uis.unesco.org/) has issued a new report, entitled A view inside primary schools, on the effect of social inequality on primary education systemsand the challenge to provide all children with equal learning opportunities
(full text, pdf, 2.93 MB)
According to the Executive Summary (pdf, 676 KB) eleven countries of the World Education Indicators (WEI) programme participated in the Survey of Primary Schools. The survey was carried out to address gaps in comparable data about the actual functioning of primary schools; with more detailed information about the context, conditions and conduct of primary schools, participating countries can use the data to explore questions and inform decisions about school inputs, policies and processes.