Feedback from Batuna about 3 weeks after the deployment
Cook Islands -French Polynesia - Kiribati - Nauru - New Caledonia - Niue - Palau - Papua New Guinea - Samoa- Solomon Islands - Tonga - Tokelau - Tuvalu - Vanuatu
Batuna Questionnaire
This evaluation survey was conducted by Elnah Tati between 2nd and 6th Sept 2008.
1. What experience has Ancy (Grade 1 teacher) with using the laptops in class? Has it helped her teaching? What methods and activities did she use? Has she been able to do more group work and student focused teaching?
In her teaching, laptop really helps especially preparing lessons for the children. She uses program (activity) that goes inline with her lesson to teach for that day. However, she teaches the children most of the activities in the laptop and they use it when its time for the computer (laptop) class to play some of the games in groups/individuals.
The activities that she uses most with her teaching lessons are:
Speak – Use when reading the books. Children uses the speak activity when reading book by themselves. Even when they came across any words that they didn’t know, they use speak to help them know the words.
Write – The children write simple stories. They even use the laptop as their exercise books. Every subject that needs to use book, they uses laptops to write in their subject for the day.
Memorise – Teach Letters and Addition.
Clock – She teach them how to read time.
Paint – Use to draw pictures in different subjects.
Calculate – Teach the children what it means to add (+) and multiplication (x) the numbers.
Record – The children uses record activity to take photo on certain objects according to the lesson.
2. What were the problems and difficulties?
1.Charging the laptops. If children take their laptops home it is difficult for them to use the laptops in class because no power to charge them during the day. Power only comes on during night time.
2. Ownership. When the children know that they personally own the laptops, they didn’t want to share it with other children (class), or their family members. They fear others might damage or careless about the usage of their laptops.
3.Seeing that the Standard 1 and pre-class are in one classroom, the pre-class are eager to use the laptops. They leave their work and were concentrating on the laptops that the grades 1s are using. Therefore pre-class need to have laptops too so that they won’t be disturbed by the laptops the grade 1s are using.
3.How have the other teachers been involved? Can they help or share the teaching with the standard one or somehow share their teaching ideas?
Yes…the upper class teachers involved in sharing their ideas to me and the children. Not only in class but directly teaching the children (grade 1) outside of class period.
4. Have the teachers been meeting to discuss ideas?
Yes.. Discussion with which program to use in certain subjects and how to relate it with the subject taught. Teachers have sat together discussing and sharing ideas on what each teacher discovered in the laptop that surely would improve learning ability of the children. Teachers help me with some of the activities in the laptops which I’m not familiar with.
5. Also some impression from the students
Upper class students and the pre-class wish that they own a laptop. Sometimes the upper class students ask the grade ones to use their laptop but they didn’t want to let them. Students are far more excited and overwhelmed of the program, discovering many new activities. These kids do not read but remembers all the activities too well.
A grade one student who is not attending class due to school fee problem, after seeing his classmates carrying the laptops home he just cannot stay at home anymore, so the parents have to pay for his school fee to come back to school.
6. Some feed back from parents. How do they see the laptops as useful, distraction, other? Do they see any changes in their child’s attitude to learning?
Introduction of these OLPC speed up the learning of even a child that still not attend class. A parent said that one of her daughters that didn’t even attend class uses the laptop and start exploring by clicking and starting using the activities. She learn by herself without parent guidance.
Some parents who attended the OLPC training see that their children are improving in their learning. Eg. Reading, memorizing numbers and letters etc. For those parents that are not attending the training finds it hard to help their children at home too. They are those that are still very slow in learning but improving slowly.
Parents are more excited especially parents of class 1 pupil. Other parents are anticipating their children in upper class to own laptops too. They felt that they are missing the blessings!