eLearning Africa - Building an online reading curriculum - May15
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This document discusses how reading can develop important literacy, thinking, and personal skills. It describes an organization that creates and distributes stories for young South Africans to promote reading. It details a case study of developing an online reading curriculum for grades 8-12 with reading modules, activities, and a learning management system to track learner progress. Issues encountered included volunteer and learner absenteeism, digital literacy challenges, and technical problems. Future steps proposed are ongoing training, offline resources, additional monitoring, and software improvements.
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eLearning Africa - Building an online reading curriculum - May15
- 2. Reading books and stories can change lives Important literacy skills: Vocabulary, grammar, comprehension, language acquisition Thinking skills: Logical progression, cause and effect, critical and creative thinking Personal development: Empathy, widening of worldviews, ability to hold different points of view, health & choices Professional development: Communication skills, argument and debate
- 3. Popularising Reading Growing Communities of Readers Developing Young Writers We create, collect and distribute exciting locally-written stories and books that are relevant to the lives of young South Africans from economically- stressed communities. Deepening Reading Practice
- 5. Getting readers hooked… it starts with the story “I like to read fundza. It gives me a boost every day. The authors are clever and the stories are great. It teaches us what’s happening in real life.” “Good story fundza. Although its fiction, these things happen in real life. I’m on mxit because of your stories. Keep up the good work” “OMG. What a beautifully written story, I cried when I read it as I can relate to so much. My mother passed on when I was 7 years old and my father is a criminal. This story has given me so much courage to review my past and accept reality.”
- 6. Case Study BUILDING AN ONLINE READING CURRICULUM
- 7. Using online reading content in formal learning environments • Designing an online supplementary reading curriculum that is CAPS-aligned for Grades 8-12. • Courses include a variety of reading modules. • Each module contains: • A short story • Linked to quizzes at the end of chapters (comprehension, language and vocabulary questions) • Discussion activities • Writing exercises • Drama and role-play • Linked to theLMS - a custom-built LMS teachers/group facilitators can monitor learner progress and access resources.
- 8. Profile page for learner
- 9. Progress report for teacher/facilitator
- 10. Activities for one of the stories
- 11. Piloting with the Year Beyond project
- 12. Activity timeline Term 1 Term 2 Term 3 Term 4 2015 academic year • Training of volunteers • Pre-test and survey • 2 reading modules • 4-5 reading modules • 4-5 reading modules • Post-test and survey • 3 reading modules • Training of volunteers • Pre-test and survey • 1-2 reading modules • Problems with ICT utilisation • Offline solutions
- 13. 1. Volunteers • Some drop-outs and some new recruits (who then hadn’t received the initial training). • General work overload • Varying digital literacy skills (sign-in and registration problems) • Other programmatic issues (no lunches for learners, security issues, etc)
- 14. 2. Learners • High absenteeism and ongoing learner recruitment • Low digital literacy skills (sign-in problems) • Limited reading and writing skills
- 15. 3. ICT Resources • Not all schools had operational ICT labs at the start of the programme. • Not all schools had iPads available and registered for use. • Ongoing connectivity issues, which necessitates offline learning material backup plans.
- 16. 4. Following the programme • Not all volunteers feel confident running the prescribed activities, especially role-play/drama • Not all learners felt comfortable participating • Some volunteers resorted to ‘easy’ activities, such as spelling exercises…
- 17. 5. Using FunDza’s custom-built technology • Many volunteers struggled to work with the FunDza theLMS system • Problems with registering new learners and then registering them for the courses • Problems with volunteer’s logging in to theLMS • Problems with accessing the prescribed activities
- 18. 1. Ongoing training of volunteers 2. Training of ICT facilitators 3. Provision of offline resources 4. Additional monitoring of the programme 5. Streamlining of the registration and course creation software Where to from here?
- 19. See what we do! Web: http://fundza.co.za Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FunDzaLiteracyTrust Twitter: @FunDzaClub Read on our mobi network: Web: http://fundza.mobi FunDza app on Mxit FunDzApp in the Google Play store Connect with me: mignon@fundza.co.za or @mignonhardie on Twitter
Editor's Notes
- Third Diagnostic Report into the 2013 matric exams: matric students are unable to write in paragraphs, they do not understand questions and are unfamiliar with the vocabulary. Annual National Assessments, 2013: The average mark for Grade 9 learners in Home Language was 43.1% and for First Additional Language the average was 33.2%. SA Book Development Council survey, 2007: 14% of adults are ‘active’ readers, and only 5% of parents read to their children. In addition, only 51% of households have reading books in them. Department of Education report from 2009: 8% of public schools have libraries equipped with books – most of these are in the former model-C-type schools. UNESCO EFA 2011 Global Monitoring Report: Children from the wealthiest families in SA are 10 times as likely as those from the poorest households to score well on reading.
- Annual National Assessments 2013: Recommends encouraging learners to read more frequently and more varied texts to gain the language skills needed for academics and life. Scientific Learning, 2008: Reading develops imagination, empathy, critical thinking, understanding of cause and effect, and general mastery of the language. Reading frequency was a key determinant of general knowledge, vocabulary, spelling, reading fluency and comprehension. University of Oxford postdoctoral research, 2011. Reading books was found to be the only out-of school activity for 16-year-olds that was linked to getting a managerial or professional job in later life. The costs of illiteracy, Stellenbosch University study, 2009: If SA citizens had a more typical level of school performance (measured against other similar development countries), SA’s GDP would be 23-30% higher.
- Low data costs. Mention wi-taxi, project isizwe and internet.org
- We did pre-tests with the learners. There are eight different schools – 5 from Cape Flats and 3 from township. There was a significant difference in terms of the comprehension test portion of the results: those from township schools performed significantly worse than those from Cape Flats schools. This points to the real and measurable difference of the legacy of apartheid schooling and resources. And, it speaks to the impacts of home language education.