Re: [Fhsst-bio] Some random thoughts

[Mark Horner]

Hi Nicole

I agree that the language issues definitely need to be resolved.

We sent a representative, Rory Adams, to a conference, Learning 
Materials in Southern Africa, earlier this year. One of the supporting 
documents for the conference was a report attributing a large portion of 
the difficulty students in Africa have with science to the fact that 
they are not taught in their home language.

If you go to http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst/1_news.html there is a link in 
the news item to the conference page if you are interested.

There is a relatively large online community of people working on 
Afrikaans wikipedia articles and it was always my intention to start 
with them when a book was finalised and we wanted to produce an 
Afrikaans version.

Xhosa and Zulu will be a bit tougher but its definitely something we'll 
have to look into. I remember an article from a while back about a 
translation project into Tswana but I couldn't find it on google.

BTW - Joanne doesn't have very regular email access so it might be a few 
more days before we hear from her.

Perhaps you and Ronell could start on a rough set of guidelines for 
future contributors?

Cheers,

Mark

Graeme & Nicole wrote:
> Hi there all
>
> Thanks for breaking the ice, Mark! I'm looking forward to getting stuck into
> this project.
>
> I just though I should mention that I have access to a wonderful set of
> diagrams from the scheme of work at my school, all of which are already
> electronic, for all the sciences. They may be under copyright, but I'll
> check that and let you know. If not, then let me know what diagrams you'd
> like, and I'll have a search for you - I'm thinking particularly of the
> other sciences now (not maths, sadly).
>
> The other thought I had is that since we're trying to make this accessible
> to 2nd language Eng speakers, it would be great to find someone who is
> fluent in scientific Xhosa and/or Zulu and/or Afrikaans. I'm thinking that
> it would be helpful to have a glossary at the back of the textbook which
> translates key words into those langauges, and gives a brief definition,
> again, in those languages.
>
> I think those 3 are probably the most predominantly spoken languages in the
> country out of the other 10, so by covering them we'd make the textbook much
> more accessible. I know we don't need to be thinking about that right now,
> but until we get translations done, I think it would be a good alternative
> approach.
>
> Anyway, Joanne and Ronell - looking forward to working with you and getting
> to know you over the coming months (years??).
>
> Bye for now.
> Nicole
>
>
>
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Mark Horner 

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Co-author:
http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/fhsst

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