Fundraising 2012/Translation/Dumisani Ndubane video (captions)

1 00:00:00,0 --> 00:00:08,34 I started looking for online means of getting myself educated in electrical engineering,

2 00:00:08,945 --> 00:00:10,591 and I found Wikiversity.

3 00:00:11,485 --> 00:00:15,439 And I thought, Hmm? A free university is quite an interesting concept.

4 00:00:17,0 --> 00:00:24,377 But, to my disappointment when I got into the school of electrical engineering pages, there was not much in there to talk about.

5 00:00:25,282 --> 00:00:27,282 My name is Dumisani Ndubane.

6 00:00:27,512 --> 00:00:28,783 I'm from South Africa.

7 00:00:30,249 --> 00:00:37,361 I always had this nagging thing in my mind. You didn't find anything but they did say it's a free-to-edit university.

8 00:00:37,849 --> 00:00:40,944 So,l why don't you put something there?

9 00:00:41,542 --> 00:00:45,512 Even if it's one course, someone might get interested in that.

10 00:00:45,988 --> 00:00:51,596 So, in my second year with UNISA I was doing circuit analysis, and I thought,

11 00:00:51,774 --> 00:00:57,946 Why not put this stuff online that I'm learning, and see who else is doing the same thing?

12 00:00:58,659 --> 00:01:03,299 I started transcribing my notes that I was taking for my studies.

13 00:01:03,965 --> 00:01:11,115 and putting those online to create a Circuit Analysis page at Wikiversity,

14 00:01:11,115 --> 00:01:16,214 and that started with a few edits which were wrong,

15 00:01:16,214 --> 00:01:19,642 which did not look OK to me.

16 00:01:20,441 --> 00:01:23,264 But when I came back the edits were fixed.

17 00:01:24,259 --> 00:01:27,676 My first reaction was - did I do something wrong?

18 00:01:29,104 --> 00:01:29,574 [laughs]

19 00:01:30,806 --> 00:01:33,354 Did I mess up? Did I do something wrong, you know?

20 00:01:34,347 --> 00:01:35,647 And then I thought about it, and I thought,

21 00:01:35,732 --> 00:01:39,118 wait a minute! There's a word for it; it's called collaboration.

22 00:01:40,172 --> 00:01:43,97 And I thought, he actually did not delete what I did.

23 00:01:44,481 --> 00:01:47,22 He edited it, and he made it better.

24 00:01:48,403 --> 00:01:53,00 It started growing. We have about eight lessons in a space of six months,

25 00:01:55,501 --> 00:01:58,06 fully developed, with questions, corrected, and so on.

26 00:01:58,904 --> 00:02:08,22 I've had at least 80 to 90 unique users who have emailed me, and asked me questions about the articles that were written.

27 00:02:08,841 --> 00:02:12,12 Some of them have asked me to work on new articles, or newer courses,

28 00:02:12,124 --> 00:02:17,98 and that has been quite motivating, to understand and notice that

29 00:02:17,977 --> 00:02:21,22 these are not people from my country.

30 00:02:21,224 --> 00:02:24,03 These are people from all over the world.

31 00:02:24,031 --> 00:02:30,96 I've had Australians, Germans, Pakistanis. and so on, going through the course.

32 00:02:30,955 --> 00:02:41,28 And being asked to do something like that for a separate course only says that I've done something right.

33 00:02:41,881 --> 00:02:45,38 So, the fact that information is free meant that everybody could use.

34 00:02:45,747 --> 00:02:52,00 Someone who comes from a poor background, like I did, can get that information, access to that information.

35 00:02:52,086 --> 00:02:57,84 I graduated with UNISA two months ago, finally,

36 00:02:58,626 --> 00:03:03,01 after spending at least five years working on my career.

37 00:03:03,008 --> 00:03:11,15 Most of the work I did on that I've put online with Wikiversity

38 00:03:11,148 --> 00:03:16,51 which was my study companion for the five years I spent there.

39 00:03:17,051 --> 00:03:19,42 So, yes, I am professional now,

40 00:03:20,034 --> 00:03:24,93 and Wikiversity had a lot to do with that.