News, Information and Useful Links for Education from
the Chancellor Oppenheimer Library
WatchKnow, a non-profit, online community has set up a website to collect, create and share free educational videos for kids. It is now available for beta-testing.
Recent videos posted include a Wind-Generator Demonstration, Boiling Stones Generator, a rendition of "That's Mathematics" to Kindergarten sight words. Worth exploring! There were links to other useful sites and lessons plans.
Spotted in this week's issue of Pambazuka News:
"Highlighting the persistent divisions in educational opportunity at the heart of the South African schooling system, Neville Alexander outlines a new direction based on the equitable distribution of opportunities for children, a more widespread culture of learning, and adequate institutional support for teaching staff."
The statement signed by: Neville Alexander, Ivor Baatjes, Nhlanganiso Dladla, Andre Keet, Nobuntu Mazeka, Nomsa Mazwai, Enver Motala, Kim Porteus, Brian Ramadiro, John Samuel, and Salim Vally.
Neville Alexander writes
"As usual at this time of the year, there has been a sudden spurt of analyses, discussions, and scenarios about our education system. Some of these are symptomatic of the annual matriculation exams-related national itch. This year, some of them are undoubtedly related to contests between political parties positioning themselves for next year’s general election. And yet we believe that something even more important is taking place – as South Africans we are sensing more clearly the depth of our crisis in education. And we are realising that education should be placed on the national agenda as a priority item."
Read the rest here...
Two Science Education stories in today's Guardian about an online competition run by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Read here and here.
"There has been a "catastrophic slippage" in standards of science taught in schools, leaving children with a superficial understanding of chemistry, biology and physics, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry."
In a competition run by the society, pupils with "a keen interest in science" sat chemistry questions from O-level and GCSE papers set every decade since the 1960s.
Only 35% got questions from the most recent GCSE papers right, and it seemed to go downhill from there with pupils doing progressively worse, the older the questions.
Here are some of the questions and answers.
Did you know that UCT Libraries is a deposit library for the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning? The books are housed in the Chancellor Oppenheimer Library on the Humanities Terrace as a separate collection with the prefix WHU.
Here is the latest quarterly IIEP newsletter.
From BuaNews Online
The Department of Education has invited interested people and
organisations to comment on the National Policy for School
Infrastructure and National Minimum Norms and Standards for School
Infrastructure.
The policies gazetted by the department recently aim to regulate and formalise the provision of school infrastructure.
In September 2007, Cabinet recommended that the department explore
innovative ways of accelerating the provision of school infrastructure
and eradicate school infrastructure backlogs.
The National Policy for School Infrastructure is published in terms of
section 3(4) of the National Education Policy Act, 1996(Act No 27 of
1996).
The aim of the policy is to provide guidelines towards an equitable
provision of an enabling physical teaching and learning environment for
all learners in South Africa, indicate clear roles and responsibilities
and unify accountability in the provision of school infrastructure.
The Policy outlines the eight policy areas which are:
* nationally established norms and standards for an enabling teaching and learning environment;
* systematised establishment and prioritisation of infrastructure needs;
* planned development of an enabling environment;
* standardised architectural designs;
* management and maintenance of immovable assets;
* diversification of funding sources;
* demonstrated delivery capacity, and
* systematised procurement management and procedures for the sector.
The National Minimum Norms and Standards for School Infrastructure are
published in terms of section 5A of the South African School Act, 1996
(Act 84 of 1996).
The norms and standards provide a clear classification of schools and a
minimum and optimum package that constitutes a functional and an
effective school.
The proposed norms and standards cover the areas including
classification of school types, capacity of a school, space norm per
learner, classroom size, school site size and location, accommodation
spaces required by school type, norms and standards for sports
facilities as well as norms and standards for basic services.
On implementation, the department said the minimum norms and standards
for infrastructure will ensure equity in the provision of the physical
teaching and learning environment, facilitate quality of the teaching
and learning environment and the consequent impact on learning outcomes
and facilitate efficient use of resources.
Both documents are available from government printers as Gazette No 31616 and Department of Education web site www.education.gov.za from Monday.
It is also available via SABINET's South African Government Gazette and Archive (1994) on the UCT Libraries' electronic resources.
Spotted on my alerts:-
The Digital Youth Project, a MacArthur-funded three year, 22 case study, $3.3 million ethnographic study of what kids are doing online, has wound up and published its results. The project is the largest and most comprehensive study of young peoples' internet use ever undertaken in the US.
According to the posting on BoingBoing: "The conclusions are sane, compassionate, and compelling: in a nutshell, the "serious" stuff we all hope kids will do online (researching papers and so on) are only possible within a framework of "hanging out, messing around and geeking out." That is to say, all the "time-wasting" social stuff kids do online are key to their explorations and education online.
The reports (summary, white paper and online book) are available at the Digital Youth Research website.
A 2006 article in the US News & World Report on MySpace and other social networking sites is also a useful and sane read on the topic.
Looking for good, trustworthy, commendable web sites for children? Check out the American Libraries' Association Great Web Sites for Kids. According to the site, "children" are defined as "persons up to the age of 14 years"
Spotted in the Education section of the Guardian (UK), is a report on a Science Council survey of 1000 UK teenagers about their attitudes towards studying science.
"The study said that students were unaware of the range of career options – including in sectors such as fashion and sport – that studying sciences could open up for them. Many young people have preconceived ideas about science subjects leading solely to laboratory jobs and wearing a white coat, it said."
"The research coincides with the launch of Future Morph - a new online resource for students, teachers and parents aimed at changing perceptions of the careers open to students with science, technology, engineering and maths qualifications."
Story in the Mail & Guardian
Education Minister Naledi Pandor is to crack
down on exorbitant salaries earned by vice-chancellors after they
failed to regulate themselves.
Pandor announced this to the Mail & Guardian
after her department released a shocking breakdown of salaries earned
by vice-chancellors at South Africa's 23 public universities, which
totalled more than R40-million last year.
The data shows that some under-performing
institutions, which rely heavily on state subsidies, pay more than
those that rely on external funding and are top research producers.
Top of the pile is the Mangosuthu University of Technology's (MUT)
suspended vice-chancellor, Aaron Ndlovu, who received a R3,68-million
package last year - making him South Africa's highest-paid civil
servant. Pandor earns R1,6-million.
Runner-up is Ihron Rensburg of the University of Johannesburg (UJ) with
R2,77-million, followed by Unisa's Barney Pityana (R2,63-million), the
University of KwaZulu-Natal's Malegapuru Makgoba (R2,3-million) and
Errol Tyobeka of Tshwane University of Technology (R1,93-million).
Read the rest of the story here
According to a story on IOL, leading academics including the self-proclaimed father of OBE, Dr William Spady, says that it is time to ditch it. Dr Spady is quoted as saying that South Africa had "completely missed the boat" in understanding the concept. He said he had distanced himself from the South African version.
This follows calls by our former VC, Dr Mamphela Ramphele, to do away with OBE.
Amnesty International has just produced a picture book aimed at younger readers (and their teachers and parents) about the Universal Declaration of Rights. A slideshow of some of the illustrations is available. Illustrators include John Burningham, Korky Paul, Polly Dunbar, Satoshi Kitamura, Jane Ray and Axel Scheffler. South African names amongst the contributors include Niki Daly and Piet Grobler. Each artist offers a personal interpretation of one of the 30 Articles of the UDHR, making them easy to understand and accessible to young readers and their families.
A short film celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Rights is to be sent to all UK schools - the film is available online and is apparently being shown before the hit movie High School Musical (not sure if this is the case in South Africa). The film features Green Wing actor Julian Rhind-Tutt – and voiced by stars including Emilia Fox, Jeremy Irons and Lindsay Duncan.
The Canada Virtual Science Fair is a wonderful treasure-chest of resources. It's an annual online science and technology fair open to all Canadian students in grades K-12. Teams pick a science or technologically or environmental topic and then create a website to display their work. (Technical assistance is available)
There are links on the site to past winning projects and more ...
This year's matric exams are the first since the introduction of the new curriculum.
In this Mail and Guardian article, Penny Vinjevold, deputy director general for further education and training, answers concerns about the integrity and credibility of the forthcoming exams.
Report in the Weekender (18 October 2008)
"AS THE African National Congress (ANC) prepares to extend free education to 60% of schools next year, it has emerged that little has been done in the past year to ease infrastructure backlogs at the poorest schools.
After almost 15 years of democracy, and an education department with a budget allocation larger than any other government department, there remain thousands of schools across the country that still do not have sanitation, water, electricity, science laboratories or sports facilities."
Teachers Matter! World Teachers' Day is celebrated on 5th October each year.
UNESCO calculates that 18 million additional teachers are needed worldwide if the goal of universal primary education is to be achieved by 2015. Many more teachers will be required to meet the needs for secondary, higher, technical and vocational education, according to a joint statement issued by them.
On World Teachers’ Day, do you want to say “Thank you” to a teacher who made a difference in your life? Electronic greeting cards are available on: www.5oct.org
Here's the poster to print WTD08_final_eng.pdf .
