Young inventors

17-year-old Herzlia pupil Simone Abramson recently showcased her invention at the MTN ScienceCentre for National Science Week. She has patented a new means of identification by photographing the back of the eye. Abramson came up with the idea when her grandfather's optometrist used a camera to photograph the back of his eye, called the fundus, to diagnose his diabetes. She became interested in seeing how accurately conditions could be diagnosed using that method, and borrowed the optometrist’s camera for her research, through which she realised there were certain ‘landmarks’ of the fundus that stayed consistent throughout a person's life. Although each person had these landmarks, the distance between them was different. She identified them as locations A, B, C and D, and created formulas which produced a 12-number sequence, or ID number for the person, from these varying distances. Her invention is more accurate than fingerprinting and other methods of identification, and it takes only a few moments.

Abramson is one of 13 learners in South Africa who have been selected as Mark Shuttleworth's ‘Hip to be Square’ brand ambassadors, showing youngsters that being clever in maths, science and technology is ‘cool.’ She was also the only representative of South Africa at the International Science Expo in Beijing at the end of March. Four of the best SA computer programmers (two of them are brothers from Rondebosch Boys' High in Cape Town) will soon compete in the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Egypt. The finalists were chosen from 34 000 participants. Over the course of 17 years, SA teams have won four gold medals, 13 silver and 18 bronze. About 80 countries send teams to compete in the IOI competitions.

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Installing broadband in Cape Town

Last December the Cape Town city council approved the fast-tracking of a city-wide fibre optic network in preparation for 2010 and committed expenditure of R400m over the next five years to cover the first phase of the project. However, the council has to rethink its plans after the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) reduced its commitment to the project from R51.6m to R30m. Nonetheless, while the latest turn of events had delayed the implementation of the project, the city's executive director of services delivery integration, Mike Marsden, said even though the break-even point would now only be reached at six years, the city still deemed the project viable.

Cape Town has now received a signed letter of intent that it will receive a total of R30m in return for 20 years' use of a portion of the city's broadband infrastructure. The portion of usage of the city's infrastructure would also be reduced as a result of the smaller financial contribution. The project team is proposing reducing the loop through Milnerton until Phase 2. The consequence would mean connecting fewer municipal buildings. The principal benefits would still accrue to the city in accordance with the original business plan.

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Wikipedia as a teaching tool

Because Wikipedia is an open-source website, entries can be started or edited by anyone in the world with an Internet connection. Typically, thousands or millions of people visit a Wikipedia entry, and each visitor is able to edit entries, or even flag an article considered unworthy to have it removed. Consequently, academics have been somewhat skeptical about the academic credibility and acceptability of Wikipedia. Now, in an attempt to reach its goal of academic standards, the Wikipedia website has set up an assessment scale on its English-language site. The best encyclopedia entries are ranked as ‘Featured Articles,’ and run each day on the home page. To be ranked as a ‘Featured Article,’ Wikipedia said an entry must ‘provide thorough, well-written coverage of their topic, supported by many references to peer-reviewed publications.’ Of more than 10m articles in 253 languages, only about 2 000 have thus far reached ’Featured Article’ status. As an experiment, in January Professor Jon Beasley-Murray, who teaches Latin American literature at the University of British Columbia Beasley-Murray promised his students an A+ grade if they got their projects for his literature course accepted as a Wikipedia Featured Article.

In May, three entries created by nine students in the course became the first student works to reach Wikipedia's top rank. Beasley-Murray said the projects took the students four months, and one entry was revised 1 000 times. The University of British Columbia entries are among some 70 academic projects now registered at Wikipedia, by institutions from Yale University to the University of Tartu, Estonia.

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The one laptop per child project

Microsoft and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project announced recently that the OLPC’s green- and-white XO computers now can run Windows in addition to their homegrown interface, which is built on the open Linux operating system. That had been anticipated for months, but it amounts to a major shift. Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the laptop project - which aims to produce $100 computers but now sells them at $188 (about R1 400) - acknowledged that having Windows as an option could reassure education ministers who have hesitated to buy XOs with its new interface, called Sugar. Negroponte had hoped to sell several million laptops by now; instead he has received only about 600 000 orders. But now beginning in limited runs, XO buyers will have the option of computers loaded with or without Windows. Versions with Windows will cost $18 to $20 more; $3 of that is for Windows, and the rest covers hardware adjustments, like an additional memory-card slot, needed to make Windows run.

The next step will be to sell just one kind of machine with a ’dual-boot’ mode, meaning users would have Windows and Linux and choose which to run each time. Because that will take advantage of a broader hardware redesign, the dual-boot XOs will cost about $10 more than today's versions, according to Negroponte. Despite the higher price, and Windows' inability to take advantage of some key features of the XO, Negroponte said his project would benefit from Microsoft's strengths in selling and deploying technology. ‘I think our goals are dramatically enhanced with Microsoft's decision and this partnership because we will reach many more children,’ he said. ‘There are now many more countries prepared to look at the XO and collaborative learning and some of the things we stand for.’ Has the solution been found to the OLPC’s hitherto problems in spreading inexpensive portable computers to schoolchildren?

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Open Document Format (ODF)

The South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) recently approved the Open Document Format (ODF) as an official national South African standard. This paves the way for business and government to adopt ODF more widely in their processes, especially since ODF is already an international standard, approved by the International Standards Organisation (ISO). The SA government has already adopted ODF as one of the standards for government communication. Bob Jolliffe of the department of science and technology (DST) says that while the adoption of ODF as a national standard is not of major significance for government – ‘this is a national standard not a government one’ - it will make ODF as a standard more visible and accessible to South African citizens. Moreover, he said that the adoption of ODF by government ‘will assist with general awareness raising around ODF.’ By September it is expected that all government departments will be able to read and write in the ODF. In 2009, ODF will become the default document format for SA government departments.

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Maths and science centres of excellence

Founder and chairperson of the African Institute for Mathematical Science (Aims), Professor Neil Turok announced recently in Cape Town the intention to establish 15 Aims centres in Africa over the next five years. The first centre would be established in Abuja, Nigeria in July. Aims Abuja will be a postgraduate centre for mathematics and computational science, with a strong engineering focus, including petroleum engineering, materials science and computational science. It will be a parallel development with the African University of Science and Technology, which was initiated as a World Bank project and cofunded by the African Development Bank and the Nigerian federal and state governments. Other centres were planned in Ghana, Madagascar, Sudan, Uganda, Botswana, Egypt, Ethiopia, Rwanda and SA as these countries had good human and natural resources with good prospects of developing into a centre of excellence to the advantage of the local populations, universities and governments. The intention is to open three new Aims centres each year. Each centre will accommodate 50 students a year, with most proceeding to Masters and PhD levels at a partnering university. The rationale for such an initiative was to develop African human capacity in the crucial area of maths and science. As far as financing is concerned, it was anticipated that the cost of supporting 15 centres would be some $150m over the next five years - less than 1% of the aid now given to Africa each year. And the entire cost per student would be only one-fifth of the cost of supporting an African student in Europe or the USA. To date, the initiative had received considerable support from international blue-chip companies. Over the past four years, Aims has graduated 160 students from 30 African countries and a further 53 students are currently at the Aims Cape Town campus.

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Using cell phones to teach maths

An innovative cell phone based programme aimed at improving maths performance is being piloted in two schools in the North West Province. Known as ‘M4Girls’, the pilot project uses Nokia 6300 cell phones that are pre-loaded with educational material to help improve the mathematics performance of Grade 10 learners. The project is an official world first for Nokia. M4Girls was developed in conjunction with the Department of Education and Mindset Network, a not for profit organisation that draws on satellite technology to distribute educational materials on mass to schools across Southern Africa. The games were developed in South Africa with a specific focus towards the country’s mathematics curriculum. The project is in alignment with the Department of Education's drive to improve proficiency in key subjects like maths among students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, and in particular girls who tend to be weaker performers in this subject. Once the pilot projects have run their course the intention is to make the programme available for download to the public through the Mindset Network website.

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Informal writing becoming pervasive

A recent study in the USA shows that two-thirds of teenagers admit that emoticons and other informal styles have crept into their school writing assignments. Half of the teenagers surveyed say they sometimes fail to use proper capitalisation and punctuation in assignments, while 38% have carried over the shortcuts typical in instant messaging or email messages, such as ‘LOL’ for ‘laughing out loud.’ A quarter of teens have used :) and other emoticons. Richard Sterling said the rules could possibly change completely within a generation or two: Perhaps the start of sentences would no longer need capitalisation, the way the use of commas has decreased over the past few decades. ‘Language changes,’ he said. The study’s authors do not see this trend as being exclusively negative. For instance, says Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew: ‘It's a teachable moment ... they learn to make the distinction ... just as they learn not to use slang terms in formal writing.’

The study also found that the generation born digital is shunning computer use for most assignments. About two-thirds of teens say they typically do their school writing by hand. And for personal writing outside school, longhand is even more popular. Moreover, teenagers who keep blogs are more likely to engage in personal writing. They also tend to believe that writing will prove crucial to their eventual success in life. A study by Dr P Takayoshi, associate professor of English at the Kent State University in the US, together with a group of graduate and undergraduate researchers, has analysed the differences between instant-messaging (IM) conversations and Standard Written English. The team discovered that the areas in which IM chatter differed from the norms of the Standard were not mere deviations, but actually conformed to a written standard local to the IM phenomenon. This means that the structure of an instant message has little regard for appearance, opting instead to concentrate on meaning; and in terms of meaning, foremost is the expression of social relationships. ‘IM is not just bad grammar or a bunch of mistakes. IM is a separate language form from formal English and has a common set of language features and standards,’ says Takayoshi.

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More science journalists and editorial space for science and technology (S&T) needed

According to the minister of science and technology, Mosibudi Mangena, S&T has the potential to make a strong and positive impact on the African continent, but its profile needs to increase markedly in order for the impact to be felt. Under the umbrella of the African Ministers Council on Science and Technology, ministers from all African Union member countries have already set continental priorities and policies that are relevant to the development and application of S&T for Africa’s economic transformation. However, Africa’s stories and achievements in S&T have never been given the publicity they deserve. ‘The continent needs journalists to do its marketing and advocacy work ... in promoting its science and technology agenda’, Mangena said. In a recent study of 15 SA publications, by Stellenbosch University, it was found that, on average, less than 2% of editorial space deals with science. A large percentage of published reports (about 38%) originates from news agencies, while there are few in-depth articles.‘As much as we are agonising to find innovative ways of making mathematics and science interesting and fun to the learners in our schools, we are equally concerned that the South African public is adequately lobbied and informed about the value of science and technology in society. We need to recruit many more science journalists.’