Sopala - Demonstrating how open practices can impact K-12 student learning in any setting

OEGlobal Plaza
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Our MIT paper is now live for the public. My co-authors and the teachers involved in Sopala are a remarkable, talented, and dedicated group. They make going to work fun for me.

Here’s the link. Sopala: An Innovative Model for K-12 Education · AI and Open Education Initiative

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Dan

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Thanks Dan for sharing about Sopala and congrats for being one of the featured in the MIT Open Learning AI and Open Education series (wow, there are a lot here to read!).

And this is a great extension of the trajectory in your efforts to support K-12 open education globally. I note seeing the addition of Kiwix into the mix of MoodleBox which makes sense.

I will do my arm twisting and ask that maybe the Sopala team can plan some kind of activity/event for Open Education Week March 3-7, 2025? We have just opened the site for adding your events, but there’s more in the work for the weeks leading up to OEWeek.

I for one will ask my usual ask- I’d very much like to see how this learning systems works in action, the tools, how teachers use it, how learners interact. Of course the bandwidth limitations are a factor, but even seeing more video (which you have shared much before), photos, etc.

Also, along with African Storybook mentioned are you using/involved at all with Storyweaver? We recently published an OEGlobal Voices podcast interview with Purvi Shah from Pratham Books and it all spoke loudly to the power of open for making reading material available in first languages.

I urge others in the community here to visit the Sopala project site and pepper Dan with questions and ideas. He readily responds here, thanks Dan.

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Yes, we’re involved with Storyweaver and Pratham Books, but not as much as we hope to be in the future. This sentence from our paper includes a link to an example of a Storyweaver book that we translated: The example at the top of this Sopala page, Ingonyama Iyabaleka Kwaye Inkomo Iyahamba, was translated by Dan McGuire using Google Translate and edited by Nomvuyo Mgoqi, a speaker of isiXhosa and Founder and Director of Khulisani Child Development Academy in Langa Township, Western Cape, South Africa. This delightful creature is one of the characters in the book.

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Thanks @danmcguire for posting this here!! On Wednesday we spoke to Maxwell on WikiAfrica Hour (watch it here: Offline discussion on WikiAfrica Hour) … he mentioned the your paper would be released on MIT Open Learn.

Excellent!! And being based in the Cape, it is so refreshing to see African characters and languages being featured. :wink: