FHSST: FREE HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE TEXTS

What is FHSST?

The Free High School Science Textbook (FHSST) project is our contribution towards furthering Science Education in South Africa.

As young South Africans who believe in building up our country, we want to use our skills as scientists to help our next generation by providing free science and mathematics textbooks for Grades 10-12 to all South African learners.

Science education is about more than Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics... It's about learning to think and to solve problems which are valuable skills that can be applied through all spheres of life. Teaching these skills to our next generation will help them when it is their turn to make a difference to our country.

Objectives

• To provide a complete high school science text that can be used for free anywhere else in the world as needed
• To provide a free resource, that can be used alone or in conjunction with other education initiatives in South Africa, to any/all learners and teachers
• To provide a detailed, accurate and interesting text that adheres to the South African school curriculum and the outcomes-based education system
• To provide a text that is easy to read and understand even for second-language English speakers
• Make a difference in South Africa through helping to educate our next generation

Principles

The driving force of this project is based on the ideas and principles of the free software community where each person does their part to build something great together.

Team

The project was initiated by Mark Horner, a UCT post-graduate physics student at the University of Cape Town, but has since grown to a much larger group of contributors including students, lecturers and people in industry.

Supporting Other Initiatives

We hope that our efforts can also help to further similar organisations elsewhere in the world, like the California Open Source Textbook Project, the OpenTextBook project and WikiBooks.

Both the tuXlabs project and the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory have asked to use our content for their online resources.

What do we mean by "free"?

The word "free" has 2 meanings... the kind of free where you do not have to pay for something and free, the state of freedom.

These books intend to be both ... we want them to be distributed at no cost, and we also want teachers to have the freedom to copy or change the content as much as they need to suit their classroom, without having any copyright problems to worry about.

For this reason we decided to license the books under the GNU FDL (Free Documentation License) which allows distribution of the book in any format and for any price (even for no price). Anyone can add or remove content, but when they do this, they must be willing to distribute any derivative works under the GNU FDL, which we may then add to our book if we think it is a good idea.

Strategy

The Free High School Science Texts project is a above all a collaborative effort. It is centrally administered, managed and grown, but we need your help to make it a success. We realise that no single person has enough time to spend days and weeks writing a free textbook. What we propose is to combine many small contributions into a quality text. Here is how we can accomplish our goals with a team effort:

Step 1: Core content

Gather many small contributions to get the core content. Here we ask many people to contribute small sections, notes or worked examples that they are willing to allow us to include. Every contributor will be credited as an author. For an idea of contributions, see take a look at the books so far or some sample essays.

Step 2: Flow and Outcomes-based Focus

Once we have enough contributions to satisfy the syllabus requirements, we plan to edit every section for simple language, flow and consistency. Once this is complete we will have a rough draft textbooks.
Next, activities, exercises and experiments will be added to the text to ensure that books meet outcomes-based criteria

Step 3: Classroom testing

Classroom testing and trials will be carried out to ensure that the content is pitched at the correct level and fulfills all syllabus requirements.

Step 4: Final edit

Using the input from classroom trials and from specialist guest editors, the content will be edited to its final state: ready for printing and use in the classroom!

Step 5: Fundraising and Printing

The books will include line drawings and so can be printed in black and white. Due to the licencing any business will be able to print copies on their own printers and provide copies to a local school/s. This will allow communities to raise money or sponsorship and ensure that their children have access to textbooks. FHSST will also work to find sponsorship opportunities to cover printing costs.

Step 6: Distribution

Besides local businesses sponsoring schools we would like to provide copies to other education initiatives and actively encourage them to use the content at their schools. We will also begin a publicity drive to raise awareness and money to print more copies.

Step 7: Expansion

There are many other education initiatives which could benefit from a free quality textbook. For example:

• tuXlab project by The Shuttleworth Foundation
• Namibian education initiative
• Africa Foundation

There are also many others!