Nepal: Pilot Sites

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Pilot Selection Process

The Department of Education selected Bashuki and Bishwamitra schools based on the following criteria:

• A poor school
• Majority of students come from disadvantaged castes
• Relatively remote location but accessible from Kathmandu
• School already has electricity

To learn more about the pilot schools, visit their individual wiki pages

• Jamirkot (Lalitpur), Bishwamitra Ganesh school
• Lakuri Bhanjyang (Lalitpur), Shree Bashuki school

Target Grades and Subjects

We chose Class 2 over Class 1 because a large portion of Nepali schoolchildren do not attend preschool. In grade one they are just getting used to being in school. With Class 2, they are already accustomed to attending school but young enough that we can measure how well this initiative helps young children.

We chose class 6 because a large portion of Nepali children drop at class 6. Also, we can test out more complicated learning activities and this challenges us to see how well our strategies work with higher subjects. In 2009, we plan to expand to classes 3 and 7, 2010 to 4 and 8, until we cover all public school grades.

Nepali students perform very poorly in mathematics and English on standardized exams. These are also the most valued skills. We think we can make the most positive impacts here.

Implementation Team

Open Learning Exchange Nepal is the lead implementer for the pilot, cooperating with Nepal's Department of Education. The Danish IT Society has purchased the XO's for the pilot and the Embassy of Denmark in Nepal is covering the other costs.

From the Department of Education:

• Baburam Poudel - Deputy Director at the Department of Education, oversees the OLPC project in Nepal
• Kamal Kafle - Goverment's technical adviser to the project
• Arjun Aryal - government technical advisor

From OLE Nepal

• Rabi Karmacharya, Executive Director
• Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta, Education Director
• Mahabir Pun, Networking and Infrastructure
• Sulochan Acharya, all technical matters at the school, esp. XO's and School Server
• Dev Mohanty, Network Engineer for wireless links
• Ram Krishna Singh, power technician
• Bryan Berry, systems engineer, School Server, XO configuration, E-Library

There is also a activity development team at OLE Nepal that is working exclusively on creating constructionist learning activities for the pilot. They are less involved in the on-site implementation details.

From Bashuki School:

• Shiva Hari Dahal, principal
• Raju Chand, vice principal

From Bishwamitra School:

• Pawan KC, principal
• Krishna Thapa
• Bhim Ghimire

The combined implementation team has been working together for over 4 months preparing for this pilot. It has been our experience so far that an OLPC pilot requires a significant amount of human resources. It would not be possible to implement a pilot in Nepal without full-time staff. We do not think it could be accomplished w/ a team of part-time volunteers. The OLE Nepal team includes volunteers, but the core team works on the project full-time.

I have discussed the matter of full-time staff with Amit Gogna, the lead implementer for India's first pilot at Khairat. He agrees that an OLPC implementation, even for a single school, requires full-time staff. His team has a total of 7 persons. One of the goals for our implementation team is to streamline the implemenation process for OLPC so it can be implemented with a minimum of human resources and use local resources wherever possible.