About Numeric

Numeric is a Cape Town based non-profit company interested in using technology to create exciting and stimulating learning environments.   As the name suggests, we’re particularly interested in maths!

Online learning tools – cool though they may be – are not always easy to use in South Africa.  With a paucity of bandwidth and not enough computers to go around, platforms like Khan Academy don’t always get as much usage as they should. 

With this in mind, Numeric is interested in finding ways to bring Khan Academy to South Africa and make it a useful resource to both teachers and learners.  There are three distinct projects Numeric is presently focused on:

  • Piloting Khan Academy in township and rural areas.  Developing high impact math programs in townships and rural areas based on the Khan Academy platform.  We currently have pilots in Khayelitsha, Nyanga and Zithulele (Eastern Cape).  Learners participating in these programs attend Khan Academy three times per week, watch the videos (offline) and do exercises (online) in a structured and supportive environment.
  • Translating the Khan Academy videos into Xhosa.  Our mission is to make Khan Academy a useful resource to teachers and learners.  However, its usability is dramatically reduced if you are not fluent in English.  As such, we aim to make the same content available by translating (dubbing) the videos into Xhosa. 
  • Developing resources for South African teachers.  Khan Academy is a vast database of videos and exercise modules.  However, it is not immediately intuitive how to use it to approach the South African curriculum.  To this end, we are mapping the Khan Academy video database onto CAPS curriculum so that teachers and learners have a quick way to find Khan Academy material relevant to what they are doing.

While we work with Khan Academy, and are big believers in their project, we are not directly affiliated with them.

About Khan Academy

Some years ago, a guy called Salman Khan started making youtube videos about maths.  These videos have become so popular that to date, they’ve been watched more than 150 million times!  They are housed, together with an accompanying exercise platform, free of charge at www.khanacademy.org.  Khan Academy is an outstanding way for school learners – both at home and in the classroom – to strengthen and improve their maths, and for teachers to make their classrooms exciting and dynamic places to learn.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people for their tireless work in helping to map the Khan Academy content to the South African maths curriculum:  John Reid, Carolyn Einhorn, Ruchelle Adams and Ros Clayton.  

Would would lke to thank Unomena for their contribution to the creation of our mobisite and offline video browser.

Partners

Numeric currently works in partnership with several other organizations.  These include Ikamva Youth (pilots in Khayelitsha and Nyanga), Axium Education (pilots in Zithulele, Eastern Cape), and Fundamaths (Translation Project).