Saide

In support of various COL education initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa and in the Pacific Island countries, Saide has been commissioned to work with institutions and government ministries to enhance access to quality education, including supporting:

• Universities and open schools to design online and blended learning courses and to use appropriate technology for teaching and learning. For example, at one university, Saide supported the institution to redesign five modules for online delivery and to develop quality assurance rubrics. 
• Institutions to develop quality assurance policies in using educational technology and in embracing employability. 
• Education ministries to strengthen Open, Distance and Flexible Learning (ODFL) systems.  

KnowHow Early Learning is a mobile and tablet  course application to facilitate self-guided group learning amongst early childhood practitioners and teachers.

KnowHow Early Learning aims to support young children to be ready for school and schools to be ready for young children. The intention is to empower untrained community ECD practitioners and primary school teachers to use interactive, holistic teaching methodologies. KnowHow Early Learning promotes collaboration between ECD centres and primary schools. KnowHow Early Learning is a key component of the ‘Early Learning Kiosk’ strategy of the Roger Federer Foundation.

KnowHow Early Learning is implemented across five Southern African countries, promoting synergies between the countries. KnowHow Early Learning is an activity-based, multimedia course, integrating the use of African Storybooks for young children.

The course is an open educational resource with a Creative Commons licence.

OER Africa was established in 2008 with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to collaborate with higher education institutions in Africa in the development and use of Open Educational Resources (OER). OER Africa is currently undertaking collaborative work to develop the professional competences and skills of stakeholders within African higher education institutions so that they can implement OER practices to improve the quality of teaching and learning.

The website showcases Learning Pathways in the form of open education online tutorials, OER courseware, research and policies, as well as regular communications (“What’s New”) on topics of interest in open education.

Acting as a backbone organization, Saide with seven Partners (funded by the Kresge Foundation) and five Participant universities work together to improve student success through evidence based interventions at scale. The Network includes national and local network components. The National Network includes a coherent set of services focused on student success (provided by Partner universities as well as by Saide) and the USA based Achieving the Dream, five sub-networks, convening meetings with Partners and the annual conference. Partner institutions coordinate regional sub- networks and Saide coordinates the national network.

Saide’s African Storybook initiative helps overcome a major barrier to learning: the severe shortage of contextually appropriate storybooks and materials in indigenous languages for young African children learning to read through working with local language speakers, educators and artists to develop, publish and encourage use of such storybooks. Visit our platform for over 3 000 unique openly licensed picture storybooks in the languages of Africa for children, aged two to ten, for their literacy development, enjoyment and imagination. Over 200 languages of Africa are represented on the website, as well as tools to enable communities, particularly those whose languages are under-resourced, to translate, adapt and create storybooks in their languages.

ASb’s Reader App, enables parents and children to create a library on their device and to read storybooks even when they are offline. Its Maker App enables them to create their own picture storybooks offline and publish them when connected to the internet. The storybooks are immediately available in the Storybooks App category on the ASb website. Both Apps are downloadable from Google Play and the iStore.

We support organisations, educators and communities in developing storybooks - translating, creating and publishing them - and in effective use. Organisations needing our services, can approach us to run story development, publishing, preparing print runs and using the ASb website and its tools.