Asia Workshop Discussion

Localization & Language

Problem 1

Low Quality of teaching. Resulting from:

• Poor Infrastructure
• individual capacity of the teacher & student
• Possible solutions
• Advocacy, policy & govt. in formal and anon-formal education to improve school standards
• Distance Learning
• Support & Resource Needs
• Government
• Funding support from private & public donors
• equipment & technology (satellite, tv, etc)

Problem 2

Local Language installed in OLPC to motivate the learning and ease the process.

Possible solutions

• Invest & motivate content creation
• Assist high level knowledge/ learning for complex subjects
• universal icons
• Learning by doing
• Support & Resource Needs
• Local language software & content
• Approach to teachers & students to maximize the exiting resources.

Comments There are new opportunities now that open media (e.g. wikis) is available. Because initiatives like OLPC is non-profit there can be many people offering help. Technology makes this logistically possible (just like how wikipedia has become so successful). Initiatives like Wikitextbooks is becoming available, which will provide high-quality content.

Issues in Rural Education

Infrastructure

Electricity

• We assume most areas were OLPC will be introduced will have some electricity, perhaps at the school but not at the homes. So, how can we manage and power the laptops?
• Charge laptops at the school to take home. Student may pay a small fee.
• Use alternative energy sources to assist. Such as, Solar energy, water mill, wind, natural gas from cattle.
• When a new method is involved, the main issue becomes how to bring the method and ideas to the rural area in a sustainable way.
• Educating the teacher, students can help

Communication

How to connect rural communities. Point-to-Point wireless for long distances and then cellular or mesh for the local connections.

Distance, Terrain

Determined mostly by the government

Social Issues

• Perhaps it is easier to introduce empowering learning in rural areas than in urban schools.
  • The school is more connected to the community
• There could be resistance to the laptop from the community/parents/religious groups.
  • Village meetings to discuss and explain the benefits and opportunities are important
  • Infrastructure to help prevent undesirable behavior such as pornography filters are necessary.

Economy (Reducing rural poverty through education)

People are poor.

• Knowledge Empowerment. Education provides indirect but sustainable income to the community.
  • Better understanding about deforestation led to better forest preservation, which led to more water for plantation.
  • Better understanding about financial management allows for better decision making about investments and loans.

Personnel: Learning how to learn

How to get MIT people in a box?

• Community involvement. Everyone needs to agree upon what to do.
• Taking ownership of initiatives. Not waiting to receive help from the outside.
• Building partners with quality and skilled facilitators.
• Building a good leadership in the local community
• "Learning by Doing!"

Fixed Curriculum

Although the education system has some flexibility for new learning initiatives, many teachers still prefer to stick to the central curriculum.

Introducing new initiatives to the curriculum itself leads to some concerns:

• Time. Schools are still bounded by standardized examination.
  • Teachers are under pressure to deliver what is expected of them.
• Teacher workload. It is a lot of work for them to adapt their existing curriculum.
• Teacher's fluency with the tool, the language used, ability to adapt to the curriculum.
• Government support. Schools will not want to participate without the blessing from the government.
• Professional support.
• Pressure of assessment.

Ways out

• Finding ways to convince the teachers and students that this is a worthwhile effort
• Model lesson (examples) for teachers as references
• Model school (perhaps pilot sites) sharing their experience
• Providing guidelines for teachers

Comments

• perhaps one place to work with is the teacher colleges, which can eventually lead to new generations of teachers that can work in model schools.
• A "model school" should perhaps focus on what can be really meaningful to the learner. For example, can we do a personal-curriculum? where every child comes with their own proposal of what they think they should/want to learn.
• Although examples and Models help motivate the change, it does not guarantee it. So the real question is how to create sufficient momentum for change.
• Using global job markets as means to motivate the direction of what is taught in schools.
• Almost every where we have tried out the laptop, parents have expressed their appreciation of our efforts because they can see how learning has become motivating and engaging for their child. This could serve as a force for change.
• Another force is from the child. Once they have experience what is possible through the laptop, they will come to school with very different demands then their previous generations. Schools will eventually have to change to answer to these new demands.

Assessment and Measurement

Discussion group for Assessment and Measurement

• Difficult issue to measure learning outcome in Thailand
• Typical measurement: teacher-prepared class-tests, national board exams for grades 3,
• Moving to classroom-based research
• Assessing quality of school for certification every 5 years
• In Malaysia, traditional assessment technique is to give scores and grades

3 different assessments

1. Assessing learning progress of individual learner
2. Assessing OLPC skills
3. Assessing OLPC rollout success

What should be meaningful learning progress indicators?

1. Age or grade-based learning targets of core subjects (e.g. local languages, English, Math, Sciences, Economics, Social Sciences, etc.)
2. Social Awareness targets (e.g. global, financial, civic, health, etc.)
3. Targets for ICT literacy and skills
4. Targets for learning and innovation skills
   1. Creativity and innovation (e.g. originality in work, open to new ideas, etc.)
   2. Critical thinking and problem solving (e.g. making complex choices, solving local problems, asking significant questions towards developing better solutions, etc.)
   3. Communication and collaboration (e.g. community involvement, assuming shared responsibility for collaborative work, learning to transcend geographiccal barriers, cross-cultural issues, etc.)
   4. Leadership, initiative and responsibility
5. Project-based learning targets

Borrowing ideas from 21stcenturyskills.org

How should we measure?

1. Checklists
2. Exams
3. Projects – individual and group
4. Observation by teachers / guides / mentors / parents / older brother/sister
5. Self-assessment
6. Peer assessment
7. Documentation of work
8. Community use of techniques and devices (civic awareness, healthcare, disaster preparedness, market information, appropriate technologies for local livelihoods, etc.)