Nepal: Pilot Sites
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
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.