Siyavula to be presented at OpenEd 2009

On August 12-14, members of the global open educational resources (OER) community will meet to discuss new directions in the movement at the Open Education Conference 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mark Horner, Kathi Fletcher, Joel Thierstein and Cynthia Jimes will lead a panel discussion of Siyavula on Friday, August 14^th, from 11:15 a.m. to 12.00 p.m.

The Siyavula panel will be approached from three angles: strategy, technology, and research. Mark Horner, Siyavula’s project manager, will provide a project overview for participants, and discuss the content that has been uploaded to the Connexions platform. He will also discuss the targeted community intervention that is underway to support the formation of groups of educators that, over time, have been designed to evolve into fully-fledged communities of practice. Kathi Fletcher and Joel Thierstein of Connexions will discuss the new features that have been integrated into the Connexions experience for Siyavula, how they have been used so far, and ways in which projects and communities other than Siyavula have benefited from their use. Cynthia Jimes of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) will present research that is informing the implementation of the Siyavula model in the South African classroom, and specifically ISKME’s examination of the curriculum needs of teachers and education stakeholders unique to the South African context. She will also discuss the benefits and challenges of creating, using and implementing OER within the Siyavula model.
 

For more about the OpenEd Conference 2009, visit the conference website.