Siyavula is very excited and proud to announce that the Department of
Basic Education <http://www.education.gov.za/>
is printing their openly-licensed textbooks for all learners taking
Physical Science and/or Mathematics in Grades 10-12, for the whole
country for 2012! A total of 2.5 million Siyavula textbooks (titled
"Everything Maths" and "Everything Science") will be printed
and distributed across the country!
Ensuring that this was possible became the exclusive focus of the
Siyavula team for the last 4 months, which was an all-consuming
exercise. We expanded our team and worked incredibly hard (each member
of the book team clocked almost 2 man months per calendar month since
mid-September!). We had to revamp our pipeline, develop new layouts
for the books, undergo multiple review iterations with DBE reviewers,
edit, edit, edit and then turn everyone into a translator in some
capacity. It has been incredibly hectic but worth all the effort, as
we proudly await the delivery of our open textbooks to schools across
the country.
This is a great milestone for both Siyavula and the OER movement in
South Africa, and will raise significant exposure of the issues around
access to materials and awareness of open licensing. For more
information on this please visit Mark Horner's blog
<http://www.markhorner.net/2011/12/05/what-happened-to-the-last-5-months/>
. To download our new books please visit our website by clicking here
<http://www.siyavula.com/books>
.
As a result of this we had to put new developments for FullMarks
<http://www.fullmarks.org.za/>
on hold for a little while, but we will send out notification next
week on the changes that have been implemented in the last while, as
well as where we stand on future developments.
We are closing for Christmas on Thursday 15 December, with most of the
team back in the office on Tuesday 3 January.
We hope that everyone has a wonderful holiday and a good break over
the Festive season!
Basic Education <http://www.education.gov.za/>
is printing their openly-licensed textbooks for all learners taking
Physical Science and/or Mathematics in Grades 10-12, for the whole
country for 2012! A total of 2.5 million Siyavula textbooks (titled
"Everything Maths" and "Everything Science") will be printed
and distributed across the country!
Ensuring that this was possible became the exclusive focus of the
Siyavula team for the last 4 months, which was an all-consuming
exercise. We expanded our team and worked incredibly hard (each member
of the book team clocked almost 2 man months per calendar month since
mid-September!). We had to revamp our pipeline, develop new layouts
for the books, undergo multiple review iterations with DBE reviewers,
edit, edit, edit and then turn everyone into a translator in some
capacity. It has been incredibly hectic but worth all the effort, as
we proudly await the delivery of our open textbooks to schools across
the country.
This is a great milestone for both Siyavula and the OER movement in
South Africa, and will raise significant exposure of the issues around
access to materials and awareness of open licensing. For more
information on this please visit Mark Horner's blog
<http://www.markhorner.net/2011/12/05/what-happened-to-the-last-5-months/>
. To download our new books please visit our website by clicking here
<http://www.siyavula.com/books>
.
As a result of this we had to put new developments for FullMarks
<http://www.fullmarks.org.za/>
on hold for a little while, but we will send out notification next
week on the changes that have been implemented in the last while, as
well as where we stand on future developments.
We are closing for Christmas on Thursday 15 December, with most of the
team back in the office on Tuesday 3 January.
We hope that everyone has a wonderful holiday and a good break over
the Festive season!
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