Noordplaas
noord = north · plaas = farm
A small home for learning projects: courses, films and workbooks made with care and free to use. The first is a history of South Africa in all its voices that teaches young people to check the evidence for themselves.
Project one · a high-school history course
Many Roots
The whole story of South Africa in all its voices, so a young person understands why people saw things so differently, and learns to find, test and weigh the evidence for themselves.
- 8units, from the Cradle of Humankind to today
- 111lessons, each with reading, a film, a workbook page and a "dig deeper" question
- 1high-school credit, covering every South African topic in CAPS Grades 4 to 12, plus the gaps critics name
- 0sign-ins. Free and open to any family or school
the eight units, one colour each from the land
- Deep Roots before 1488
- The Cape Colony 1488–1806
- Kingdoms and Treks 1806–1860
- Diamonds, Gold and War 1860–1910
- Segregation and Resistance 1910–1948
- Apartheid 1948–1960
- Repression and Uprising 1960–1990
- Building a Democracy 1990–today
Every side, every source
VOC records beside Khoekhoe and archaeological evidence, Voortrekker accounts beside Zulu testimony. Where historians disagree, the lesson says who says what.
Tools, not verdicts
Students learn to test a source, compare two accounts and write a balanced argument, so they can take part in the debate honestly.
Truthful, and lovely to use
Hard history told truthfully but not graphically, with real paintings and places, warm writing and hand-drawn films.
Using AI well
AI that makes you think more, not less
Teenagers already ask chatbots about history, and a chatbot can sound sure and still be wrong. Many Roots is built with Claude, and it teaches students to use AI the way a good researcher would: as a guide to the evidence, never a replacement for it.
Find the source
Use a chatbot or search to point you to a real source: a letter, a record, a dig report, a museum.
Check it twice
Find the same fact in two independent sources and cite both.
Ask who and why
Who made this source, when, and why? What does it show, and what does it leave out?
Decide for yourself
Weigh the evidence and write your own argument. Help fades over the year until you find and check your own sources.
the course's rule
Use a chatbot to find a source, never as one.
coming next · built on the Claude API
The Dig deeper helper
Students ask a question about the past. A guide built on Claude helps them find sources from more than one side, check one against another and weigh the evidence, then asks what they conclude and why. It never hands them the answer.
How it's made
One parent, one student, and Claude
The course is written for one 16-year-old who learns best from clear, simple, well-made books, and then shared with everyone. Claude does the heavy lifting at each step, and every page is checked against the course's own rules for accuracy and missing voices.
Research
The curriculum, its critics and paired archives from every side, read and summarised into source notes.
Write
Lessons, workbook pages, tests and answer keys, in plain words a teenager can get on with alone.
Draw
Films drawn frame by frame in code, in coloured pencil on paper, with period paintings taped in.
Check
Every lesson asks: whose voices are here, whose are missing, and would each community recognise its own story, told honestly?
On the shelf
What's next at Noordplaas
Many Roots
South African history for high school. Unit 3 lessons are written; films and workbooks are coming out lesson by lesson.
A new project
More courses and films in the same spirit will live here.
And another
Every project under one roof, at noordplaas.com.