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The Build directory contains scripts which are used to prepare milestones and activities from the original
Siyavula content. It also contains scripts to generate 'basic' and 'Karma' activities from the source 'content' folder.
The scripts assume the following directory structure:
/library/
/library/courseware
/library/rwcd
/library/rwcd/git
/library/rwcd/git/content
/library/rwcd/git/build
/library/rwcd/Siyavula
/library/rwcd/siyavula_science
/library/rwcd/siyavula_technology
/library/rwcd/siyavula_mathematics
/library/rwcd/siyavula_english
/library/rwcd/master
/library/rwcd/trial
Conversion of Siyavula Learner's Modules to 'basic' activities:
(Assume conversion of Mathematics modules for P1)
1. In siyavula_english, create folders for each course: e.g. za1.
2. The original files are in the Siyavula folder: Ed Gd 1/Mathematics/Learner's Modules as MS Word documents.
Some of these modules are equivalent to a milestone. Others have enough material for multiple milestones. These
modules are often divided into Learning Units. These modules represent the course work for a complete year
(30 weeks). A typical milestone should contain enough material (activities) to require a student from one to
two weeks to complete. This means a year's course should have between 15 and 30 milestones. In Rwanda, the
year's course may be divided into three terms, each of which has from 5 to 10 milestones (typically 7-8).
3. In this case there are eight modules (.doc files) containing Create a folder in za1 for each milestone,
e.g. map1m1, map1m2, .... The current conversion in this case each module is converted directly to a milestone.
Copy each module (.doc file) into the corresponding folder in siyavula_mathematics (map1m1 etc.).
At this point you should have eight folders in siyavula_english each containing a single .doc file.
4. Open the .doc file in Open Office (Write). Save it as html (Save As and then select html format at the bottom
right of the pop-up window.). At this point the folder will contain the original .doc file, a .html file with the
same name and the images for the module (.png and .gif).
5. Look at the original doc file or at a printed copy. Decide where the module should be divided into activities. This
is art not science. There are several considerations in making this decision. First, the content is intended to be
printed on A4 paper. The html will be displayed on the OLPC laptop screen. Therefore an activity should fit on one
or more screens. Second, an activity should be a single task for the student. The student must be able to understand
clearly what he/she is to do and when he or she has finished. Students in Rwanda will normally have a forty minute
period each day to work on the course. If a typical student can finish the milestone in seven periods and the
milestone has twelve activities, a typical activity would require about twenty-five minutes to complete. So the
process to identify activities within a milestone is to look at the original Siyavula module and decide how to divide
it into tasks. Some modules have activities or assignments or a list (A., B., C.) to help identify activities).
6. Edit the .html file for the module in gedit or notepad. Enter a horizontal rule tag (<hr />) in the text to show
the separation between activities.
6. In the command line, run the .cleanUp.py script (./cleanUp.py English za1 map1m1). The cleanUp.py script will clean
up the html and write a file: source.txt in the folder. This script operates on a single milestone and should be run
for each milestone to be converted. The source.txt file includes the <hr /> tags entered in the previous step.
7. In the command line, run the .cvtSiyavula.py script (./cleanup.py English za1). Note: The cvtSiyavula script
operates on all of the milestones in a course. The cvtSiyavula script creates folders in /library/rwcd/trial with
the top level named for the subject (siyavula_mathematics). In this folder, there is a folder per milestone. In the
milestone folder, is a folder per activity. The cvtSiyavula script renames image files as img1.png, img2.png, ....
These images are resized to the height and width specified in the html <img> tag. Images in .gif format are
converted to .png format retaining the size of the original.
8. Copy the folders for the course (za1) to the content folder replacing the one already there, if any. In this case,
the /library/git/content/Mathematics folder.
9. In general, this conversion will be done only once for a module. Beyond that point, the content will be edited for
the OLPC laptop, to meet Rwanda curriculum requirements, and to improve the lesson. If the conversion process is
repeated, those edits will be lost.
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