The World Economic Forum, in its recent Financial Development Report, placed South Africa at the bottom of its list - number 62 - for the quality of the country's maths and science education. The WEF report, which analyses the financial system drivers that support economic growth, understandably places enormous importance on the subjects, being the foundation on which the system depends.
Business Day reports that the 2011 census results show that, a decade ago, 2.7% of men and 2% of women who had tertiary qualifications in South Africa had qualifications in the fields of natural, physical and mathematical sciences. By 2011, this had declined to 2% of men and 1.8% of women.
It's going to take hard work and innovation to reverse the cycle and to come up with ways to enable students and teachers to expand their knowledge and skill set. However, there are moves afoot to help redress the problem.
In what is another first for South Africa, Future Mobile Technology (the South African company that, in 2011, brought South Africa its first ever affordable 3G-embedded Android tablet) has developed a DRM-protected content management program for the Android operating system platform.
The program, aptly called ACMEE (Android Content Management System for Education and Enterprise), efficiently and effectively manages training and education course content to then be accessed by the learner/trainee via an intuitive menu-driven system on a tablet. All content is stored on the tablet (so you don't need an Internet connection) and is encrypted using unique encryption software so that licensed or sensitive information cannot be illegally copied to another device or PC and used by anyone who is not authorised to use it.
The program is flexible and can be customised to fit almost any training/education requirement.
In its first such application, FMT has created the netsurfer SCHOLAR (using ACMEE) for the TouchTutor Maths & Science NCS-aligned package.
Developed in conjunction with the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University's Govan Mbeki Mathematics Development Unit, the netsurfer SCHOLAR comes pre-installed (no need to go online) on FMT's current and new range of high-quality, entry-level affordable tablets, the netsurfer LITE and the netsurfer DUAL.
"The TouchTutor is a flexible, technology-driven resource centre for educators and learners. The package, which is exclusively available on FMT's tablets, contains over 183 hours of supportive audiovisual curriculum, such as videos and live experiments for maths and science students in grades 10, 11 and 12," says FMT's joint CEO, Graham Davies. "There are over 5 Gigabytes of South African schools curriculum content preloaded onto the tablet. For any parent wanting their child to pass maths and science at school, this is an absolute Godsend!"
Davies says the video-based material and simple intuitive menu-driven interface ensures anyone, even someone who has never worked with a computer or tablet before, can use the program.
"We wanted to create an innovative video model that uses a number of technology solutions to increase effectiveness in teaching maths and science," Davies says. "The video material means you don't have to be computer literate to work on the tablet. At the same time, topic lessons, explanations, discussions or even experiments are just a finger touch away."
Joint CEO Tracy Andersson believes it's essential to prepare more students for a tertiary education, something that is being inhibited by poor skills in maths and science. Originally approached to simply add a series of pre-prepared educational video material to FMT's e-reader, the WYZEMAN, Andersson and Davies realised there was an opportunity to take the idea many steps further, and use their expertise to create a curriculum-compliant program that would truly enhance education.
Students in the Eastern Cape have already successfully tested the program and content during a four-month pilot study conducted by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University's Govan Mbeki Mathematics Development Unit, and it is currently being rolled out in the first phase of a national programme to selected recipients throughout the country.
"As a proudly South African company, determined to help bridge the digital divide and develop much-needed maths and science skills in our country, we believe the netsurfer SCHOLAR shows the real benefits of mobile devices in enabling education and training. By incorporating the National School Curriculum syllabus in this user-friendly format, students and teachers will have the support they need to excel," Andersson says.
All TouchTutor material is aligned with the National Curriculum Statement syllabus and Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements amendments will be incorporated according to Department of Basic Education requirements.
The TouchTutor package and netsurfer tablets are 24/7 on-demand dedicated maths and science personal tutors that enable students to learn or revise whenever they need to, in the comfort of their homes.
Resources include:
* Grades 10 & 11 CAPS-aligned NCS mathematics content video series
* Grades 12 NCS mathematics content video series (CAPS elements available in 2014)
* Grades 11 & 12 NCS physical science content video series
* Grades 11 & 12 NCS physics and chemistry experiments (66 in total)
* Past national NCS mathematics exam videos (questions and solutions)
* Casio calculator video series
* Learner workbooks that are aligned with mathematics
* Additional material: Siyavula Everything maths and science books for Grades 10, 11 & 12. TouchTutor is available on any tablet of netsurfer.
* Various other science and maths support material
* netsurferSCHOLAR and TouchTutor package come pre-installed on all FMT tablets. They have approximately 183 hours' of viewing.
* 100 hours of classroom maths videos
* 60 hours of science instruction videos
* 15 hours of past exam papers
* Five hours of informative science experiments
* Three hours instruction video on using the Casio calculator
The netsurfer SCHOLAR together with the TouchTutor package comes preloaded on FMT's selected tablets and will soon be sold with a national retailer.
For further information and examples, please view our movies on YouTube:
Science experiment extract - Grade 10: http://youtu.be/fOODBTVnTGI
Maths tutorial extract - Grade 10: http://youtu.be/twequTx2Qk4
Please contact us on: education@futuremobile.biz
Written by Glenda Nevill.
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