Buzz
Siyavula is a South African platform specializing in open educational resources, offering open-licensed textbooks for primary through high school education, covering grades 4 to 12. There is much to learn from Siyavula's technology-driven educational philosophy. However, this article focuses solely on browsing and downloading books from Siyavula's catalog of open-licensed textbooks.
Steps
Browse Siyavula's Catalog of Open Licensed Textbooks
Navigate to Siyavula's homepage.http://www.siyavula.com/index.html
Navigate to Siyavula's open-licensed textbooks page. From Siyavula's homepage, proceed to the catalog of open-licensed textbooks at the following address: http://www.siyavula.com/work-oer.html. Then, scroll down to the Open Catalogue section.
Explore Siyavula's catalog of open-licensed textbooks. As of late December 2016, the Open Catalogue includes open-licensed textbooks with the following features:
- The open-licensed textbooks on Siyavula include: (1) Natural Sciences and Technology for grades 4 to 9; (2) Physical Sciences for grades 10, 11, and 12; (3) Life Sciences for grade 10; (4) Mathematics for grades 10, 11, and 12; (5) Mathematical Literacy for grade 10. All open-licensed textbooks are available for:
- Teachers, for instruction.
- Students, for learning.
- In South African indigenous languages.
- In English.
- All textbooks can be downloaded in the following open formats and licenses:
Check the license and download the selected textbook
Review the license of the selected textbook. On the same Siyavula textbook page, below the Open Catalogue section, you'll find details about their licensing:
- CC BY-ND: You are permitted and encouraged to freely copy these versions. You can photocopy, print, and distribute them as often as you like. You can download them to your mobile phone, iPad, PC, or USB drive. You can burn them to a CD, email them as attachments, or upload them to your website. The only restriction is that you cannot adapt, modify, or alter these versions of the textbooks, their content, or covers in any way, as they bear Siyavula's branding, sponsor logos, and are endorsed by the Department of Basic Education. For more information, visit Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
- CC-BY: Identical content versions without branding are available for you to share, adapt, modify, transform, or build upon in any way, with the sole requirement of providing appropriate credit to Siyavula. For more information, visit Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.
Select and download the textbook.OPEN CATALOGUECC BY-NDGoogle Drive
- Grade 5A, for teachers.
- Grade 5A, for students.
- Grade 5B, for teachers.
- Grade 5B, for students.
Download
CC BY-ND
Download
Distinguish between books under different licenses: CC BY-ND and CC BY.CC BY-NDCC BY-NDCC BYOPEN CATALOGUECC BYCC BY
Cloud epub ReaderCloud epub Reader
Zip ExtractorZip Extractor
Select formatConvert EPUB to any formatConvert EPUB to PDF
Start ConversionConverting file to PDF
Download
open-licensedCC BYCC BY-NDCC BY
Recommendation
- Libraries in primary, middle, and high schools should consider referencing Siyavula Academy's books. These are not only unique because they are open-licensed textbooks freely downloadable by anyone, but also stand out for other reasons, such as including both student textbooks and teacher guides; being aligned with South Africa's national compulsory education curriculum; utilizing technology through the Bookbuilder tool; offering multiple versions, both non-modifiable and adaptable under different Creative Commons licenses; featuring links to video files to supplement lessons; and, perhaps most importantly, embodying a philosophy integrated into the entire process.
- The approach to creating open-licensed textbooks by Siyavula is also highly worthy of study and reference for those in Vietnam intending to produce open-licensed textbooks.
