The following interview is with Mark Horner, the person heading the
Free High School Science Text (FHSST) project. This project has the
goal of providing free science textbooks to all of the high school
students in South Africa. These books, currently under development,
are being uploaded to and/or developed on Wikibooks.
Karl: Mark, thank you for taking time out of your Ph.D. research to
answer these email questions. Our first one: Tell us just a bit about
yourself. Where are you from? Where are you now? What is your research
about?
Mark:
Firstly, thanks for the opportunity to talk about the project. I
really appreciate it.
I'd also like to say up front that I am not the only person
responsible for where things
stand and a lot of people have done a lot to help and keep things going.
I am a South African PhD student registered at the University of Cape
Town (UCT,
http://www.uct.ac.za). I am currently spending some time at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (
http://www.lbl.gov)
in California where I work on the STAR experiment which is housed at Brookhaven
National Laboratory in NY as part of the RHIC facility
(
http://www.bnl.gov/RHIC/). My research is to try
deduce the properties of the medium created in the Au+Au collisions by extending
the work in this preprint:
http://arxiv.org/abs/nucl-ex/0501016. Here is a
more user friendly link:
http://www.bnl.gov/RHIC/heavy_ion.htm
Before I start to bore everyone, I think that's enough about what I do
as a "day job". Unfortunately it doesn't leave me
as much time as I would like for FHSST.
K: How did the Free High School Science Text project get started?
M:
I was a summer student at CERN in October 2002 and the PhD students in my group
were all discussing how it would be so much better to have a consolidated set of
notes for Physics 3. I floated the idea of a collaborative effort to
write either a 3rd year
Physics textbook or a high school textbook and there was more
enthusiasm for the high
school book. The reason we thought there was an opening for a high
school book at all
came down to an experience I had at the Grahamstown Science Festival
(
http://www.scifest.org.za/) in 2002. I was demonstrating
some wave properties as part of the UCT stand when a group of school
students came to me with a notebook
and a pen and asked me to write down everything I'd told them during
the demonstration.
They said they didn't have textbooks and had understood more about
waves during the
demonstration than during their lessons. That was quite an eye-opener.
I also feel that education really is the key to any sort of
sustainable, peaceful future for any
country and that's one of my personal motivations for not giving up. I
believe that an investment in
education is an investment in your own future. Southern Africa is
relatively stable for the first time and now is our opportunity to try
to add momentum to
the education movements.
Another thing that I really like about the project is that it isn't
competing with other education
initiatives, but developing a resource for them to use. Education
initiatives need all the support
they can get and forming yet another tutoring organisation won't have
the same impact as developing content
all other initiatives can use. I like to think we are filling a useful
and fundamental niche.
K: Who is working on the project? Are they educators, students, someone else?
M:
Anyone and everyone who wants to. We try to accomodate anyone who
wants to make a contribution.
Most of the work has been written by graduate students but we do have
teachers, undergrads, professors
and industry professionals amongst our contributors. We also have a
very widespread contributor base. For
a long time we had mostly South Africans but that has changed quite a
lot over the last 2-3 months.
K: How many people are currently involved?
M:
We have a relatively long list of contributors but only about 25
active contributors at any one time. We are always
looking for people who are interested in making a contribution of any
sizei; every bit counts and it certainly adds up
over time.
K: What is the timetable for the first book to be done? When do you
expect to see the books printed and in use in the classroom?
M:
We should have Physics finished by the end of this year and released
for print by
the middle of next year. Its very difficult to put timelines on
development because
we have a wide range of volunteers and things take time. There will be
some pilot distributions
during 2006 and we should have a few thousand copies of Physics,
Mathematics and Chemistry in
circulation for the beginning of the 2007 school year (January in SA).
K: Where does the funding come from for this project?
M:
At the moment we haven't tried very hard to raise any money. Our
hosting is free on Savannah as we use
the GFDL. All the recruiting has been by word-of-mouth or email. We
have registered a non-profit
organisation in South Africa which is, for practical purposes, a
prerequisite for receiving funding from
any corporate sponsors.
We are currently working on our first real attempt to raise money. We
need to have someone employed
by the organisation at least part-time in 2006 as we will need to run
pilot distributions, raise money,
organise printing, run competitions and many other things that the
current volunteer administrators
just won't be able to keep up with.
We will approach
large corporations, who do sponsor education initiatives, as well as
the national lottery. A more grass-roots
approach we would also like to try get moving is that schools raise
money from their local communities to order
our books directly from the printer. A project where we match the
money raised might help get communities more
active in supporting their schools. Obviously we will do our best to
raise money to completely cover the costs
of distributing to schools in extremely poor areas and these schools
will be our priority.
K: What would be your definition of success for this project?
M:
Two things:
1) We make a complete set of textbooks available free of royalties and they
are widely used in SA schools. They will always be available through
print-on-demand for anyone who can raise
money for a print. Even through print-on-demand we estimate that the
cost of the books would be less than 40% of
current books.
2) Widespread adoption of our content as a starting point for other
education initiatives to build their
own books, exercises, lesson plans etc. We already have had some
success on this front and so the future
looks really bright.
K: Can you describe the FHSST textbook development process?
M:
I am nervous of calling anything our development process before we
actually finish a book but here is
our (my) current feeling for how it is going to go. We need 3 pieces
to meet the spirit of the syllabus in SA. We
must have the core content with worked examples, we must have
experimental and project activities and
we must introduce a large body of information regarding real world applications.
Each book has a single coordinator who is also a member of the
administration team.
Our first approach is to collect all the core content with worked
examples. To do this we assign individuals
small sections to write with basic guidelines. The coordinator tries
to keep things as coherent as possible
given that it is being written by a large group of people. We try to
keep the language usage and style
as consistent as possible.
Once the core content, which is not specific to SA, is done we rotate
editing of chapters through the authors, checking
everything. Hopefully every chapter would be read by at least 5 people
and checked thoroughly. These editors would have
stricter style guidelines to impose.
While this is going on we contact individuals and companies with a
call for essays of real-world applications for the books.
These are modular and country specific. To make a version for another
country I would replace all the essays with essays from
people in that country.
Then it goes to one qualified editor to check that the text is
coherent and consistent and the experiments and projects are
added.
Then we will trial the book with a few teachers and get final feedback
from them. This would be last set of changes before
we pilot the books with students.
K: How did the partnership with Tuxlabs come about?
M:
They had just got close to the 100 mark for labs built and were
looking for proper education content
to put on their servers since their labs are not necessarily connected
to the internet. They did some searching online and decided we had the
most content that was
actually going to be useful to them and so they phoned us one day to
ask if we'd be keen to meet. One of
our objectives is to try to work with other organisations, educational
initiatives competing is a real waste
of resources. After a meeting we agreed that we'd help them as much as we could.
They had been trying to hire people to write content but the prospect
of a free license had scared most
potential authors off.
K: What role do you think the Wikibooks community can play in the
development of these books?
M:
I think that a large community like Wikibooks could be an incredible
resource for writing
the core content and developing worked examples. Harnessing the power
of such a large
community effectively would allow us to develop books very quickly. I
think Wikibooks could ultimately
play a massive role in addressing educational deficiencies all over the world.
The Wikibooks logo says "Think free. Learn free.", so I think we're
all in the same business, making knowledge
available to all. We've just picked a specific group that needs
specific information which
should make a massive difference to their future.
K: I think an email of mine convinced you to start the development of
the FHSST Biology book directly online. How do you think that
developing a book from scratch on Wikibooks will effect the process?
M:
I think there are two massive benefits which come to mind immediately,
ease of development
for people of different technological backgrounds and a large
community of active individuals who
care about the same things.
Let me elaborate, we found that there can be significant teething
problems for people from a Windows/Word
only background to move to working on LaTeX documents available via
CVS. We do not want to restrict volunteers
to people who know how to use CVS and LaTeX. Different scientific
communities use different software. Amongst
mathematicians and physicists I have found that CVS and LaTeX are
quite common, but amongst the biologists they
are almost unheard of. Forcing CVS and LaTeX use would severely
decrease our potential contributor base. Contributing
through Wikibooks requires a browser and a small learning curve
regarding syntax. Its a much smaller hurdle than
learning all LaTeX syntax, how to use CVS and all the other nuances
that show up. The online help also reduces the workload on the
administrators of FHSST to help individual authors.
I hope that development on Wikibooks will prove to be faster, more
efficient and less stressful for everyone involved.
A large fraction of people aren't really interested in developing free
textbooks. Wikibooks brings together
a large number of like-minded people which is great. There is a
community of people out there who are dedicated
to this worthy cause and we can definitely achieve more working together.
My only concern, and it may stem from not having spent enough time working on
Wikibooks and getting a good feel for things, is how to create a
feeling of community around a single book. As part
of the FHSST project we have a mailing list for each book for general
discussion. I know about talk
pages and watching a page on Wikibooks but I feel that mailing lists
get the core discussions to
people faster, requiring less active effort on the part of the author.
To produce a
textbook, cohesion and consistent notation and language style are very important
and I think the best way to ensure this is to get the authors involved in
discussion. These issues aren't as important for a project like Wikipedia but
to produce a textbook that will be used in a classroom they need to be
addressed. By doing so we address one of the first concerns raised by
people when
they hear that the books were written by volunteers.
K: Who will be the people using these books first? All public high
school students in South Africa, or all high school students in
general?
M:
In reality we will need to build a base of support and prove ourselves before we
will be able to raise enough money to print books for all students,
though that is the ultimate
goal. We will make our books available from the printer at the cost of
only the printing so students/schools who can afford them
can just order them directly. For the schools that really need them we
will need to raise money
to cover printing costs. We would like to support as many other
education initiatives as possible
and so we would like to distribute books to schools that are involved
with partner education initiatives
first. These initiatives include tuXlabs and iKamva
(
http://www.ikamva.kabissa.org/), specifically because the tuXlabs
schools will have the FHSST
content available on their computers and the iKamva tutors will have
helped trial the FHSST content.
From that base we would need to demonstrate that our
texts are well
received by the students, make a difference and have the support
of the teachers all on a large scale. When we can do this we can raise
money to expand into more rural schools, though we
won't be restricting use in schools in more affluent areas but we'll
first go where we are needed most.
K: The FHSST website states that the primary goal of the project is to
provide free science texts to high school students in South Africa.
Providing these texts to Wikibooks will make them available to the
whole world. What effect do you think this will have?
M:
Ultimately it would be great if there were FHSST textbooks used in all
countries. All
we would have to do is replace the essays with ones more relevant to
that country. In a sense
we have a modular textbook. It would also be nice to make a
translation project. All
of this must wait until we at least have some books written. If we
spread ourselves too thin I think
things might fall apart and nothing will be achieved.
Our objective is to write books to make a difference in SA but at no
point did we not want to make them available
to everyone, we are well aware of the implications of the GFDL. Our
focus was just to make an investment
in education in our country. The way I see it an investment in
education is an investment in your own future.
K: Are the books being written according to South African curriculum
standards? Are these closely related to those of other countries?
M:
I am not a curriculum expert so I can't comment much on how the SA
curriculum compares to other countries.
We have adopted the approach of fulfilling all the syllabus
requirements and more. Everything that is mentioned
in the SA syllabus will be contained in our books and more. We felt
that if we wrote a book which wasn't
adequate preparation for a student to enter university then we have
failed. We have included
any topics which we feel can be introduced in high school and would
help better prepare students
for university. This content will all be labelled as optional if it is
not in the syllabus. Hopefully it will help all
the motivated, diligent students out there that want to know more and
go further. We have taken some guidance
regarding additional content from the UK syllabus as well as from
university students.
It also means that if the syllabus should change by any reasonable
amount in the next few years, our books
should still have sufficient scope to cover the changes. This would
save unnecessary reprinting of books.
K: What will happen to the other high school science textbooks
currently being used in South Africa? Are most of the books used
currently imported from outside the country?
M:
A large number of textbooks are written and printed locally, however, they are
still costly.
One key point to note is that we have a new syllabus, with an
outcomes-based structure, starting with a phased implementation in
2006 and so all schools will need new books
to cater for significant changes in the syllabus.
It has been asked of me how I feel about competing with publishing
houses for their market and
for the most part I feel that our target audience are precisely the
people who fall outside the
real market for big publishing houses. Its clear that they haven't
stepped up to the challenge of
getting books to all students and I feel education is too important
for us to stand idly by.
In the long run our efforts to strengthen communities would enlarge
the potential markets for the
big publishing houses and when schools have more than adequate
financial resources they will buy the
books they feel are best for the students and not the cheapest books.
This would mean that it would
be a more than fair competition for a large publishing house.
K: What percentage of South Africans achieve at least a high school
level of education?
M:
This I had to research and I found a nice page documenting the situation in
South Africa. Here is a short quote and the link.
"While 65% of whites over 20 years old and 40% of Indians have a high school
or higher qualification, this figure is only 14% among blacks and 17% among
the coloured population."
http://www.southafrica.info/ess_info/sa_glance/education/education.htm
One note to avoid confusion, the term coloured has a different meaning
in SA to what it
does in the US. I refer you to this page for an
explanation of what it means in a South African context:
http://www.southafrica.info/ess_info/sa_glance/demographics/population.htm
K: How would you compare and contrast FHSST to the MIT OpenCourseWare
project (Massachusetts Institute of Technology plan to make its course
materials available on the web)?
M:
We have quite different target audiences, although I think that
web-based coursework is a great idea.
We hope to eventually make a difference to kids who've never seen a
computer. We really want to support initiatives working in
extremely poor areas. By educating people in those areas you work
towards sustainable development. In a
few educated generations the communities might be strong enough,
economically, to support schools with computers
and internet access but there are many schools who have nothing like that now.
Of course, the content will also be available for free on the Web, for anyone
with access to a computer to download and print in any/all countries.
K: What are the biggest challenges that you see facing the FHSST project?
M:
At the moment we have many ideas and some good solid plans but we
don't have the time to carry
them out. If we manage to raise sufficient funding then we will hire
someone to work on the project
at least part-time. This will improve our turnaround time for all
administrative issues. It will also
allow us to do more active recruiting and have a single person to
start negotiating prices for printing
etc. We can also put some of our ideas, like scientific writing
competitions to raise content rapidly, into
action.
Once we have books we need to overcome the "you get what you pay for"
stigma but this will be relatively
easy if we can gain the support of organisations like the South
African Institute of Physics, a few members of which
are already involved with our Physics book.
Then we need to raise lots of money, but at least we'll be able to
print books for less than $3 per book!
K: What are the enemies to education and learning today? How are they
different in South Africa than in other (more developed) countries?
M:
Thats quite a question! There are many symptoms for problems in
education but I think
that we can bring it all down to one thing, complacency. People must
never become complacent
about education. If you do you'll only notice in 15 - 20 years time
and then it takes as long to
fix. The world needs to treat education as a mission critical
endeavour all the time, at all levels.
A strong education system will support so many other facets of society
by producing well-rounded,
well educated individuals.
It is not just about the government worrying about education;
communities need to support their schools and
never lose sight of the fact that the next generation will strengthen
or weaken their own society.
It is a concern that worldwide it seems corporations can monopolise
textbook markets, politics can affect what science is taught,
teacher and school budgets are being cut and there is no massive
outcry from the public.
We can't solve all these problems at once but, by working together, we
can create a community to support
education and hopefully turn the tide.
K: Mark, thank you very much for your effort and contribution in the
FHSST project, and your time in answering all of these questions.
M:
Thank you for the opportunity. I apologise that it took me so long to
answer all your questions.
I really hope that we can add something to the Wikibooks community by
ensuring that all the content we develop
is available on Wikibooks and is of high enough quality to be useful
to everyone.