Collaborative GrantProposal/TechnicalResources
Contents
Evaluating Program through Technology
In addition to traditional monitoring through surveys and test scores, the program will be evaluated by having the technology track schools' use of these resources.
The Laptop Journal
The Journal is a custom file system which records student and teacher use of activities. A student can open the Write activity in class, start typing a paper, and save it to the Journal. Just like other file systems, the Journal stores the student's paper and keeps a note of when that application was used. The Journal also tracks whether activities were shared with other computers, and records when students use interactive learning activities such as Measure (for environmental sensing) and Moon (for phases of the moon and eclipses).
When monitoring this program, educators can visit a school, see what activities have been used by individual students, and determine how recently those activities were used.
Tracking Resource Use by Schools
What is a user-agent?
When a computer or mobile phone requests a page from the internet, it sends a user-agent string which describes the computer's web browser and operating system. This helps the webpage display content which is compatible with the computer.
- A computer with the Windows XP operating system, using Internet Explorer 7.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729),gzip(gfe)
- An OLPC XO laptop with the Linux operating system, using the Browse activity (a simplified version of Mozilla Firefox)
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008072400 OLPC/0.4.6-1.olpc3 (XO) Firefox/3.0,gzip(gfe)
How will this be applied to schools?
The laptops will be customized with a school-specific ID in the user-agent. There will be no effect on internet accessibility.
Our health resources program website will be hosted on a server which tracks use of each health resource, and the participation of each school in the program. Additional partnerships can be made with health, literacy, and primary education projects (such as Uganda's Newspapers in Education program) to track schools' participation in online activities.
An Open Book for Future Technology Programs
Our work will create free resources in open formats. This means that these projects can be used in future technology projects by USAID, Ugandan education officials, or other non-profit organizations.
The laptops' Sugar operating system and activities are open source technology (sugarlabs.org). This system is compatible with many systems, including new and used computers using Windows, Linux computers donated to Ugandan universities from Camara, future versions of the XO laptop, and the competing Intel Classmate laptop.
A significant portion of the health resources will be available online. These resources will be immediately available to any schools with computers and internet access. Additional funding is needed so that more students can become computer literate and gain access to these resources.
Activities and Curriculum
WikiPack
A WikiPack content pack can be added to add English and Simple English articles and photos to the existing WikiBrowse activity.
Selected articles would be relevant to health, Ugandan history, world history, and science classes.
Health Resources
Health resources such as Straight Talk can be provided to the students, with potential features to include interactive quizzes and anonymous questions from students.
Online resources can provide additional information and up-to-date warnings in health crises such as the 2010 smallpox scare in eastern Uganda.
A number of health activities have been created by OLPC Canada.
Map and GeoQuiz
Offline Map and Geoquiz activities can prepare students for exams in geography. The Conozco Uruguay activity could be modified to teach features in Ugandan geography such as names of major cities, lakes, and mountains.
Spreadsheets and Graphing
The laptops have three main graphing activiites: Measure, SocialCalc, and Finance.
