By Melvin Kaabwe.

The year saw a further investment by Gauteng into e-learning solutions and an expanded tablet roll-out for public k-12 (basic education) schools. In the private sector, all the chain k-12 education providers continue to improve their own versions of e-learning with emphasis on additonal Learning Teacher Student Materials (LTSM) whilst upskilling teachers to develop more interactive content for their students.

In HigherEd, the national picture suggests a plateau phase for e-textbook adoptions outside of the institutional e-learning and Learning Management System (LMS) environments. The LMS is quite firmly entrenched as a defacto e-learning platform for most faculties that are looking to exploit the online noticeboards for the purposes of automating assignments, marking and executing continuous assessment milestones. The Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) / Further Education and Training (FET) market appears to be embracing e-learning technologies but less via e-books but through devices.

Here we will focus on the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) as a case study for the centralised deployment of e-books that is being vigorously promoted by the Gauteng Province MEC for Education, Mr Panyaza Lesufi who is likely to influence National Government Department of Basic Education (DBE) to adopt the GDE template.

GDE ICT rollout in schools

The GDE held an e-learning Information Session on 25th May 2016 in Newtown Johannesburg. The discussion was about the ICT roll out in schools which affects the book industry directly. Below are some of the notes taken by Charity Sibanyoni from the presentation by Arthur Ndlovu of the GDE e-learning Directorate on behalf of Director of e-learning, Ms Phindile Nkumane Mathabathe.

The GDE has set an aspiration to be a leading school system enabled by plans on providing digital content to schools and to train teachers in that regard. “To achieve this, the GDE executed rigorously on Infrastructure, e-content, Training, Refurbishments and Security using and acknowledging lessons learnt in implementing other Information and Communication Technology (ICT) initiatives in our schools.

Given the scale of the task, the GDE took a position to model this aspiration in identified schools of the future in a phased approach.

• Phase 1: Six selected schools as a proof of concept
• Phase 2A: Grade 12 Classrooms in 375 No Fee Secondary Schools (July 2015)
• Phase 2B: 24 Full ICT schools (July 2016)
• Phase 3: Grade 11 in 450 secondary schools (July 2016).

The GDE also plans to renovate all classrooms to become ‘futuristic’. They are aiming for a paperless classroom in the near future. They are first going to implement ICT in schools that are performing well and achieving a 100% pass rate. The GDE aims to be done with phasing in ICT in all the provincial schools by 2019.

• The rollout of the ‘Schools of the Future’ Programme prioritizes Grade 7–12.
• The rollout is a phased in approach in two categories.

Full Service ICT School which entails the provision of dedicated ICT resources for individual learners (tablets with e-books and the enhanced e-content) and teachers (laptops for lesson preparations and smart boards for lesson presentation tools with lesson plans, e-books and the enhanced content), School Local Server and Wi-Fi connectivity. This category includes Schools of Specialisation i.e. Engineering, Commerce, Arts, Sports, Twining Schools and Schools that obtained
100% in matric.

»» Classroom rollout in ‘No Fee Paying’ Secondary Schools which entails the provision of laptops for lesson preparations and Light Emitting Diode (LED) Smart Boards for lesson presentation tools with e-books, lesson plans and the enhanced content, classroom server and Wi-Fi connectivity.

The GDE told publishers that they not only want to work with them as partners to procure e-books but they also want them to also provide e-book training for teachers.

Requirements
The GDE wants to secure digital content. This is based on security problems that they have had in the past with e-books that were loaded on the learners’ tablets.

Teachers should be able to send homework to their learners on their tablets and also share notes with their students on their e-textbooks (features that are currently available on Vitalsource).

Teachers should be able to track their learners’ progress digitally in order to ensure that the learners are indeed using their e-books on their tablets for learning purposes.

The GDE wants the content of the e-books to be interactive and engaging to learners instead of flat PDF e-books. For example, learners should be able to see a live video or demonstration of how a frog is dissected on their e-textbook. They should also be able to show how experiments are conducted on their e-books. They want learners to enjoy using their e-books as they are currently bored with PDF e-books. They’ve asked publishers to improve interactivity. Another issue that teachers had with PDF e-books is that they are difficult to navigate.

Envisaged e-books that the GDE would like from publishers would be enhanced e-books available offline or online through the virtual e-platform with the following characteristics:

• Interactive: Input and output, multimedia rich video clips, podcast, simulations and animations.
• Allows online assessment with real time feedback.
• Support LMS to track usage.
• Real time collaboration.
• Allows for underlining, notes, bookmarks and highlighting.
• Allows for GDE updates.

The GDE also asked publishers to create supplementary materials that enhance Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) and they must have media rich content.

Problems that need to be addressed
At the current moment specialised schools are not catered for. School subjects like engineering, graphic design, etc. currently do not have textbooks that are available in digital format. Another problem that the GDE has picked up is that there are currently no school e-books that cater for learners with different learning disabilities. They also would like for that to change. There are currently no set works available for African languages available in digital content. There is a very limited number of African languages e-books that are currently available.

The GDE mentioned that they currently have issues with the licensing of the e-books that are purchased for learners. Most of the time the licensing is for 12–24 months only. They want to have e-books that can be available on a ‘cloud hub’ with all approved e-books which they can retrieve anytime. They want something similar to a digital library for the schools. They are basically looking at having a cloudplatform.

They would also like for e-book suppliers to preload and package the devices that are purchased for learners with books according to their grades and subjects.

The biggest problem that teachers are currently facing is that learners tend to delete their bookshelf apps with all their e-books in order to make space for personal photos and videos.

They would like for the e-books to be encrypted in such a way that learners won’t be able to delete them. That is a challenge that they put out to the stakeholders.

Another problem that they have encountered with the e-books is that they tend to be different from traditional books. For example, there are certain mathematical characters on traditional books that appear differently on e-books which is something that tends to confuse teachers at times.

Teacher experience and feedback
The GDE is encouraged that teachers are gradually maturing on uses of ICTs and in particular the provided e-content. Through engagements with teachers, the following has been noted:

• Inconsistencies of contents in some of the hardcopy textbooks and e-books, i.e. In a maths hardcopy textbook certain equations are given as x2 whereas in an e-book is given as 2x.
• Enhancement of e-books are critical as most e-books are not interactive nor supported by videos and thus end up being a text behind the glass.
• Navigation is not user friendly as some e-books do not have a ‘page back’ or ‘page forward’ button. The user always needs to go through the index page and the actual pages are not numbered.

A teacher from the Tandi Eleanor Sibeko Secondary School in Nigel made a presentation about his experience using the Vitalsource Bookshelf and mIEBook. And this was his take on using the Vitalsource Bookshelf:

• All languages should be catered for on the ‘start reading’ feature.
• They would like to be able to copy text from Bookshelf to a Word document which would make it easier for lesson preparation as it allows them to use various textbooks.
• In language studies, literature set works must be made available as per the school or cluster recommended booklist.
• The educator must be able to access the learner’s Bookshelf app remotely to highlight important

E-book Cataloguing
An e-book catalogue was compiled during 2015, it includes all Caps aligned e-books for Grade 7–12. All core subjects covered and the catalogue serves as a guide for procurement of e-books for all GDE institutions.

There is currently no availability/limited availability for e-books for Special Needs Schools, e-books for technical subjects to support schools of specialisation i.e. Engineering subjects, etc., e-books available for set works in African Languages, e-books for FAL in African Languages, systems to monitor e-books utilisation by schools and there is a consistent problem of limited/ no interactivity.

Going forward, the GDE asks publishers to consider improving on the highlighted limitations:

• The GDE will review e-books Catalogue annually to include updates (only titles in the DBE textbooks catalogue will be considered) July/ August 2016.
• Development of e-catalogue for supplementary (during the financial year2016/17) July/ August 2016.
• GDE to meet with the Association of Publishers to formalise an SLA on e-books licencing model, in particular issues relating to accidental deletion of e-books, accommodating subject changes, activation periods, etc.
• Publishers are required to mediate and support the schools’ use of e-books.

Cataloguing process followed by GDE

• The GDE will take advantage of the DBE Textbook Cataloguing Process as its compilation has been done through a competitive process of textbooks evaluation and screening.
• GDE will avail a CAPS Approved Textbook Catalogue to Publishers to update of provide information on the titles available in an e-format.
• The GDE will avail an inclusive template for publishers to use in this regard.
• The responses from all publishers on the provided templates will then be used to compile an E-books CAPS Catalogue.

Going forward
The GDE will collaborate with DBE in the screening process to make the textbook evaluation process inclusive. The E-content Provisioning Process (Value Chain) is detailed below:

• Step 1: The GDE conducts a qualitative curriculum profiling (needs analysis) process per school, per teacher and per learner.
• Step 2: Appoint an e-content aggregator to:
  »» Create an e-content image to accommodate different readers from various publishers.
  »» Aggregate various e-book readers to one e-book reader that will be compatible with the provided/GDE ICT devices.
  »» Preload the content image on the devices and quality assurance.
• Step 4: Package the devices per school, per grade, per class and per learner.
• Step 5: Distribute to schools
• Step 6: Monitor and support the utilisation.

By September 2016, the GDE had announced the appointment of Bongani Rainmaker as the fulfilment agent to GDE schools for this phase of ICT schools roll out and that SA Booksellers Association member Snapplify would be their technology deployment partner. This situation climaxed with School Publishers being asked to re-think their e-book LTSM pricing, leaving local Gauteng booksellers under even more pressure.