Fund Raising and Lesson Plans

Last night Kasinja and I talked. He wanted to know what I was doing for the project. SPACE has assigned me these tasks:

1. Promoting the organisations awareness in USA.
2. Establishing and maintaining links with local government and non government agencies, international agencies in Canada.
3. Organising fundraising events for the Organisation in USA.
4. Recruiting Volunteers from USA.

We'll see how it goes, I'm not sure I'm really the right person for all those duties.

The idea we talked about was the production of a short book, really a lesson plan. I linked to Lars' wonderful Pattern Book as an example of sort of publication I had in mind. I pointed out that for $100 or so 500 copies could be produced and put into schools. I also suggested that like Lars' Pattern Book that it should be made available as a free download somewhere on the Internet.

I think this project can accomplish many of the organization's objectives and get the ball rolling towards obtaining a computer and other equipment. I will talk about some of the objectives, but first it's important to keep in mind three important questions people who donate money ask:

1. What will the project do?
2. How will the organization do it?
3. How will the organization measure the success of the project?

It seems quite realistic to raise $100, especially when people can see what the product is that is being distributed. So the narrow focus on making a lesson available to schools is good because the "What?" question is easy to answer. Kasinja says he already knows the schools, so the first "How?" should be reasonably easy to answer too. And he says they already have a questionnaire made for teachers, so the third "How?" seems in the bag as well.

Kasinja mentioned that he had an elementary level biology text which was under twenty pages and he sent it to me.

I do not have Microsoft Office. Maybe because of that fact, I'm not such a big fan of Word as a format. I much prefer to put up documents for downloading from the Internet in PDF. Of course I don't have any of the costly Adobe software either. But with Open Office I can easily export documents to the PDF format.

Something I will mention is that in the USA the standard size for copy paper is Letter size, 8.5 inches by 11 inches. In Uganda and most of the rest of the world the standard size is A4 which is approximately 8.3 inches by 11.7 inches.

Ah, now comes a hard part of what I want to say: I'm not sure what to do with the text. Part of my quandary is I don't think exactly like Kasinja. Part of that may indeed be because we are from different cultures, and I think like an American. But let me try to explain my thinking.

When teachers think about lessons they ask a set a questions which are quite similar to the questions that donors ask. They want the lesson to have an objective. They need to figure out how to engage the students in and activity around that objective. And finally they want to plan in advance how they will know whether the objective of the lesson was met. Generally the the evidence for that last bit is something the student does, in other words some student behavior which will show whether the lesson was a success.

Kasinja's elementary biology text demonstrates his exceptional capacity for analysis. But the result is rather like a taxonomy of the subject of the biological sciences. Rather than being elementary, the text is actually difficult for young learners.

There is a secondary issue and that is in regard to the diagram of a microscope in the text. My hunch is that image is a copyrighted image and SPACE does not have permission or the right to use it.

It may seem strange to say, but teachers of young learners find out quickly that facts are over rated. It's not hard to test for facts, students can define words, for example. But teachers often find that it's hard for students to build understanding with facts alone. Science isn't fundamentally a body of facts, it is at its root a process for knowing. So teachers are concerned with providing activities which impart the important skills of doing science in lessons.

Seton Hill University, a university in New York State USA, has a Web page where they've reproduced a list of important science process skills compiled by The American Association for the Advancement of Science. The basic science skills are:

Observing

Classifying

Measuring

Inferring

Predicting

Communicating

I highly recommend looking at the page. At the bottom of the page is also a link to a page which provides a format for lesson plans which may be of some interest.

My basic point is that I believe the most valuable publication of the sort we intend will be one which actively engages students in an activity rather than a text which solely provides information. Ideally the activity will be fun and memorable for students.

I well understand the feeling of urgency to get a computer! I also understand that many of the group are graduating and part of the importance of the computer is to keep the organization together post graduation. But I also know that fund raising is very hard, that's a big part of the misgivings I have about the roles I've been assigned.

I do believe that with a good publication--short, something printed on 4 pages both sides--is a good path to beginning the fund raising effort. With this project the organization can demonstrate it is capable of providing value and measuring it. This success will go a long way towards building the credibility of the organization which will be needed in order to gain more money.

Think of it as a demonstration project, an experiment. It is important that this publication be of high quality and of use to students and teachers. One advantage of making the booklet available online is that it could me made available at OER. It is quite possible that this publication will be downloaded thousands of times by people all over the world. The publication can make an impact. And through this publication it will help to build recognition for SPACE as an organization. That recognition will make fund raising more successful.