December 16th. It’s a public holiday in South Africa – Day of Reconciliation. It’s also holiday time, and the streets of Makhaza are filled with people making ready for their Christmas festivities or their annual pilgrimage to the Eastern Cape. The small children are playing in the streets, the older kids are heading to the beaches, but seven of Makhaza’s inhabitants get up this morning and go to the office.
These seven remarkable individuals (pictured below) are part of a very exciting project called Khan Academy. With a library of over 2,700 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 253 practice exercises, Khan Academy is on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace (www.khanacademy.org).
Project X Team – Top Left: Unathi Smile, Mandisi Gladile, Patrick Zangwa, Andrew Einhorn, Ayanda Gladile. Bottom Left: Athi, Ayanda S, Yanga Zukelwa
This team, however, has a more specific goal: To translate the Khan Academy videos into Xhosa. At present, the videos are being subtitled into 47 different languages around the world in a Wikipedia-style open collaboration. Of these 47, 16 are in the process of being dubbed. The reason? Khan Academy is not truly open to the world until it has been translated into the languages that make it accessible to the world.
When scouting about for a name for the translation project, we discovered that Xhosa is the only official language on the globe that begins with an ‘X’. It followed naturally that we name the operation “Project X”. This is the name that has stuck, and Project X is now well and truly under way.
It is a momentous task, but our translators have so far shown themselves to be up to the challenge. In the space of just two weeks, they have fully translated and edited the first 40 videos, which address topics in arithmetic. This equates to roughly 8000 lines of Xhosa, or 64,000 words. The videos are translated by individuals and then edited as a group to gain maximum simplicity and clarity in the translation. The goal for December is to complete the Arithmetic and Pre-Algebra playlists – two of the three core sets of videos in the Khan Academy math library. So far the team is well on track.
Project X is not only about bringing Khan Academy to the seven million Xhosa speakers in South Africa. It is also about leading the way for other African countries and language groups to follow suit. At present, Xhosa is one of only two African languages into which the videos are being translated – the other being Swahili. Ironically, while of all the continents Africa has perhaps the greatest need for learning tools like this, it is also the continent that has the lowest Khan Academy penetration. Project X is one way we are trying to rectify this imbalance.
If you are interested in getting involved with Project X, or setting up a parallel project for another language group, please contact Andrew by email on andreweinhorn@gmail.com.
Translation in Progress: Khan Academy’s online translation tool (and coffee!)
Makhaza Prize giving
Prize giving event is conducted at the end of the academic year as a celebration of the successes of learners, volunteers and staff. It’s great to celebrate the end of the stressful exam period and the imminent summer holidays, so we give it all we’ve got. Makhaza branch had prize giving on the 26/ 11/2011. Due to the larger number of dedicated learners and tutors Makhaza branch issued out 112 certificates. 3 of most dedicated, good marks, leadership role, and best attendance learners were given a computer each. Other prizes that Makhaza learners got were Freshly-ground tickets. 15 of Makhaza branch learners will get the opportunity to watch freshly-ground performing live. The lovely Makhaza choir and hip-hopsters ensured we had good music. Tembela, one of the grade 12s who got 4 certificates plus a computer, couldn’t hide the joy and happiness during the ceremony. Thanks to Patrick for a great motivational speech which inspired most of the learners and tutors, also thanks to Joy for a great speech and background about the organisation.
One of the key things when you’re working with dedicated people is to show them the appreciation of their amazing work. It is indeed a pleasure to recognize and thank all of our tutors for the great year and amazing work they done for Makhaza learners this year. Makhaza branch tutors had their funny party at cool runnings in Tygervalley. Cool runnings is the most popular adventure sport. Ride the 1, 25 kilometre of twisting steel half-pipe and reach up to 40 km per hour. In this driving you control the speed with a hand brake, so you can go as fast or slow as you like. For most of the tutors, it was their first time for this kind of the trip. Then after the ridings tutors had lunch and chatted in the park near Tygervalley.
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Take yourself back to high school, back to a time when you did the barest minimum to get through school, a time when you’d rather be outside running around than buried in your school book after school. Some of the grade 11 learners are bucking this trend, and not only are they committed learners at IkamvaYouth (all with 100% attendance) but they also participate in IkamaYouth’s first official Book Club.
While the Book Club is still in it’s infancy they have already all read ‘One Day’ by David Nicholls. They have also tackled all the books in the ‘Twilight’ series, a popular teenage series. As a reward they were all treated to the opening of the ‘Breaking Dawn’ movie (one of the novels in the series).
Lungile Madela had this to say, “Twilight to me is an amazing story, set apart from the world, filled with wonderful characters and a fantastic plot. I’ve had the pleasure of reading all the books thanks to IkamvaYouth, it was an amazing experience for me. The books are very compelling and incredibly hard to put down, once you’ve started you cannot stop. The idea of bringing the books to life on our screens was a magnificent one.
The movies are as great as the books, the characters are exceptionally cast and so alike to the ones’ on the books it’s surreal to picture them elsewhere. In the fourth book of the series, Stephenie Meyer has truly outdone herself. She’s created a riveting climax to the story and has us at the edge of our seats. Breaking Dawn Part 1 was a delight for Twilight fans everywhere.
I can’t wait for part 2!!!! Fingers’ crossed for part 3..
If you have any books you’d like to donate or have any contacts to run literary workshops with our learners please contact:
Liesel Bakker – Makhaza Branch Coordinator
Tel: 079 633 8155
Email: liesel@ikamvayouth.org
Excitement, happiness, joyfulness that was the feeling of the two girls, Lorna Marenene and Thembela Gibson after they found out that they won two tickets each for the Janet Jackson concert in Grand West. Lorna and Thembela were entered on Janet Jackson 20 under 20 years old extraordinary people competition where Janet Jackson planed on meeting, honouring, and recognising up to 20 young people under the age of 20 for their extraordinary contributions to their local communities in each city she visits. Lorna and Thembela were selected to 
be part of this group because of their extraordinary contribution to their school life, IkamvaYouth and their community, Makhaza.
Lorna is a self-motivated and conscientious person and always willing to get involved. She organised, highly motivated to accept responsibility. Lorna joined IkamvaYouth in 2010, since then she has shown extreme commitment to the homework and tutoring sessions, and her academic marks have improved dramatically through this commitment. The commitment that Lorna shows in the organisation, indicate how she love being part of the community development. Besides her academic success, she is learner representative at the Makhaza Branch of IkamvaYouth in 2010 and 2011 and part of the Branch Committee. This involved her in the decision-making processes of IkamvaYouth and fostered her natural leadership skills.
Thembela is someone who always willing to learn get involve and not afraid of the new challenges. She always believes that a change can be done especial when it comes to South African education. Being a leader is what motivates her, because it’s not about leading the group of people but being the role model of that particular group you leading. She has been involved in the IkamvaYouth programme at the beginning of this year. Ever since she joins the programme, her extra ordinary working being part of the program not only motivates the tutors but also the learners of the organisation.
The concert took place at Grandwest arena. The tickets that the girls won also allowed then to meet and greet Janet Jackson at the backstage. The girls got the opportunity to greet and take a photo with Janet Jackson. “For the first time in my life I watched an international singer live on stage” Lorna said. Thembela said if it wasn’t for IkamvaYouth she would never got such an opportunity.
Well done girls!
Khan academy is an online learning tool created by Salman Khan in the United States (www.khanacademy.org). While it provides educational content for a variety of subjects, its primary focus is mathematics. Put simply, when a learner “does” Khan Academy, they work their way through a series of exercise modules, beginning with the simplest problems in math, like 2 + 5, and progressing until the learners are working on algebra, trigonometry, and even calculus problems. The idea behind Khan Academy is that when a learner reaches a module covering material they find difficult or have not encountered before, they can watch a video that teaches them how to do it. In this way, they can effectively self-learn their way through the entire school curriculum.
A couple of months ago, I approached Liesel Bakker – the branch coordinator at Ikamva Youth, Makhaza – to see whether we might pilot Khan Academy with some of their learners. Ikamva Youth, as I rapidly discovered, is a “can-do” kind of place. Within weeks we had a computer lab installed, and today we are five weeks into the pilot.
In keeping with Khan Academy tradition, I have put together a short youtube video to keep our sponsors (and you!) up-to-date with what we are doing:
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A special thanks to Liesel, Zukile, Thembi and Joy for providing the learners, the space, and the necessary support to make this happen; to David and Elaine Potter for your generous sponsorship and encouragement; to the US Embassy for contributing towards the lab upgrade; and last but not least, to the coaches – Unathi, Yanga, Mandise, and Bekho – for your continued commitment to, and enthusiasm for, the project.
And lest I leave out our most important participants, congratulations to our pioneering grade nines who have steadfastly stuck with the program and blown us away with their mathematical ability.
One pencil, one pad of paper, go! Khan Academy in action
Of Mice and Monitors – Installing the new lab
Over the next few weeks 20 students from Makhaza will be embarking on a pilot programme by the Khan academy. This academy is on a mission to provide free world-class education to anyone anywhere.
The Khan Academy, an educational NGO created in 2006 by Bangladeshi-American educator Salman Khan, uses over 2600 videos covering anything from basic mathematics, history, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics and computer science.
Championed and managed by Andrew Einhorn, a Potter scholar at UCT the Makhaza lab has had a complete overall, kindly co-funded by the Potter Foundation, the US Embassy and WIT.
Students can make use of the extensive video library, practice exercises, and assessments from any computer with access to the web. They can start at 1+1 and work their way into calculus or jump right into whatever topic needs some brushing up. Each problem can be broken down step-by-step through watching a related video
At Makhaza we are piloting this innovative system with the grade 9’s and 10’s involving the math part of the system. We are doing this because of the low basic numeracy skills of township learners. Our learners will cover the basics and ensure that they have the grounding they need to tackle grade-level mathematics.
Huge thanks for Andrew Einhorn, the Potter Foundation, US Embassy, and WIT for making this happen!!
Here are a few pictures of the lab upgrade in action..
Lloyd Lungu