Our end objective in the use of technology is to enhance learning in elementary schools. We believe that we can ignite the desire in the child to learn. We believe that a learning child will be the foundation for establishing a just, equitable and humane society.
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J. Shankar
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Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre
Gail Godwin, American novelist
Who among us cannot recall the teachers who held us spellbound with humor, drama or wit in the classroom? For most of us, they would also be the ones that taught us our favorite subject
or did it become our favorite subject because they taught it?
Over the years, in our endeavor to engage children and to share the joy of discovering knowledge and skills, we at the Azim Premji Foundation have tried several methods of pedagogy. From stories in the Panchatantra to dice with alphabets and numbers and toys in kindergarten, every method has been used to engage children. It is only logical that the power of computers is also harnessed for this purpose.
At the heart of all transactions is the CONTENT
In 2001, Azim Premji Foundation, after an initial review of the content available for children, decided to invest in developing content for students of rural elementary schools in India in the local language. Considering that imagination is the only limitation to realising the full potential of computers, the collaboration of available talent from the fields of education and technology was actively sought.
In first half of 2002, a series of workshops were conducted with teachers from four states, academic and pedagogy experts and technologists. As part of the workshops, existing content available in both in developed nations and in India was reviewed.
Computer-aided learning and child-centric content were chosen in preference to computer literacy and teacher-centric content for the first level of technology driven educational initiatives. The rationale for computer-aided learning was that since computer literacy would be a by-product, the focus would be on actively engaging the child. Child-centric content would provide a different experience to the child from the normal classroom.
Animated cartoons with storylines set in a rural environment were a conscious choice as our audience was children in the age group of 6-14 years and from rural schools. Competency based content in the local language, in Hindi and in English, with game based evaluation was the pedagogic choice. Teachers from four states prioritised the topics to teach first. The structure consists of learning screens ad evaluation games.
About 35 to 50 individuals put in over 24 manmonth efforts, in four to six calendar months to create a topic. While the presence of animators, dubbing artists, programmers, storywriters and subject matter experts is visible for all to see in the content itself, the contribution of the child psychologist can be understood only when children interact with the content.
Over the last three years, we have produced 50 titles in mathematics, language and environmental science for students in grades I to VIII. These titles are available in Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, with optional Hindi and English. We also have one title in Urdu, with more under translation in Oriya and Gurmukhi.
Nine
tenths of
education is encouragement"
Anatole France, French writer
I
like playing on the computer. When I make a mistake, the computer does
not scold me is a reply that we often get when we ask children who use
computers about their experience with them. When we formed the team for creating content, the child psychologist was a key member of the team. We realised in the beginning that technology could be programmed to have patience, especially while dealing with children when they learn. Positive encouragement goes a long way in helping the child learn. When a child makes a mistake while using the content, positive encouragement is provided each and every time.
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Reaching out to the children
If creating content was intellectually a challenge, reaching out to children in rural elementary schools in India was a logistic and linguistic challenge. These were challenges that we eagerly took on, as our objective was to take technology to rural Indian schools with a purpose. With technology in schools, we wanted to
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Make learning play
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Assessment fun
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Equal knowledge for all
Today, the content created by Azim Premji Foundation is used in over 1000 schools spread across 6 states and union territories. The process of reaching out to children in these schools evolved in four stages.
Stage I: Leading the pilot making assessment fun
Beginning with Play to learn, assessments are a vital process in learning and in assessing learning. The use of single and multi-player games that combine psychomotor skills with the opportunity to demonstrate learning is an attraction that pushes performance anxiety to the background by leveraging on a range of skills. The concept that education is not a race for the swift to win, but a mountain peak for the motivated to scale is brought out in the single user games.
In the first stage, which started in 2001, Azim Premji Foundation identified 35 Government higher primary schools in the rural districts adjoining Bangalore for establishing Computer-aided Learning Centers. Based on school strength, between 5 to 9 computers were provided to every school in the ratio of 1 computer for every 40 children in the school.
Making assessment fun
Beginning
with Play to learn, assessments are a vital process in learning and in
assessing learning. The use of single and multi-player games that
combine
psychomotor skills with the opportunity to demonstrate learning is an
attraction that pushes performance anxiety to the background by
leveraging on a
range of skills. The concept that education is not a race for the swift
to win,
but a mountain peak for the motivated to scale is brought out in the
single
user games. |
Our model was to group the class into two. One group would visit the Computer-aided Learning Center and the other group would remain in the classroom in the first computer period. In the second computer period the group in the class would visit the Computer Center with the other group being in the classroom. The group visiting the Computer Assisted Learning Center would have three children using a computer together. In view of the erratic power supply in rural areas, a UPS with a 90-minute backup was provided. To house the computers without displacing any classroom, the Foundation constructed a room in the school. To ensure smooth operations, we identified Bharatiya Yuva Mithra (Young India Fellow) volunteers from the local community who had completed their schooling and in some cases college education were selected for training in dealing with children, working with computers and in skills of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship was emphasised as the program envisaged support from the foundation only for a specified time. The equipment was covered under warranty for two years and the volunteer was paid an honorarium for the first year. The center would generate revenue from using the assets before and after the school hours for local individual and community needs to pay the local volunteer and for the upkeep of the equipment in the center.
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Equal knowledge for all
We attempt to provide
rural children with the exposure that is
available
to an urban child. This could reduce the disadvantage the rural child
faces
when she competes with the urban child. Creating co-curricular titles
that
provide exposure to simple day to day items that an urban child is
exposed to
like the telephone, fan and computers is an effort in this direction.
Titles
covering traffic lights and road safety, railway stations and airports
and some
more projects are on the anvil to achieve this objective.
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Computer-aided Learning Centers started operations in the academic year 2001-02 with 4 CDs. For the first time, children in rural primary schools from class I to VII were provided computers to use. No fee was charged for the use of the computers during school hours. The excitement among the children and the parents was visible for all to see. In the first year, the revenue generated by the center before and after school hours was primarily from the children of better off families who paid between one tenth and one-fifth of a US dollar for using the same content for 30 minutes to an hour.
Stage II: Partnering to expand
The second stage of evolution was set in motion when the Primary Education Department of the Government of Karnataka, seeing the excitement generated by these centers started a dialogue with the Foundation to expand this initiative. The dialogues culminated in a partnership between the local community, the state government and the foundation. The state government came forward to provide equipment to 5 schools each in 11 districts. Funds from the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan were used in this project. The Foundation undertook to mobilise local communities to build with local resources, a room to house the Computer-aided Learning Center. In addition the Foundation would provide Content for all these centers, select and train local volunteers and set up a monitoring mechanism to ensure that these Centers are well grounded.
Between November and December 2002, 55 centers in 11 districts commenced operations. Eight titles were available to start with and four new titles were added in 2002. The five centers in each of the districts were located in taluks with low literacy levels. Community mobilisation for selecting the centers resulted in much higher visibility for the project, leading to better revenue generation. The momentum gathered in the first year was strengthened with 55 centers being set up in the second year. This continued into the third year when 135 centers were set up between July and October 2003, 5 in each of the 27 revenue districts of Karnataka.
Where the last child learns
The President of India was to visit a
government primary school on the
outskirts of Bangalore. As a part of his
visit, he was to interact with 14 children working on 7 computers in
the Computer-aided Learning Center in the school.In a meeting among the
teachers, the School Development Monitoring
Committee Members and the Foundation representatives to select the 14
children,
two options came up. First option, to select the 14 best children, a
question
of judgment or to pick at random, by a lucky dip in class.The Teacher
in-charge of the computer center assured the gathering that
all children in the class could use the computer and its content, and
she was
confident of selecting children at random. This is how children
were selected when on July 23, 2004, President Dr.Abdul
Kalam visited the Government Higher Primary School, Nagasandra.
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When we took stock after three years of commencing the program, children were using Computer-aided Learning as a supplement in 225 government primary schools in Karnataka. The interest and excitement among the school children left us in no doubt that what we were doing was worth the effort.
As we visited centers day after day where we could see the impact of multimedia content on children, we wondered what it would take to reach out to all primary schools in India. We decided that we had to find an alternative means by which we could reach out to more schools, especially as we had by now created over 20 titles.
Stage III: Improvising to accelerate
This search led us to the third stage of evolution where we started to look at computers in villages. Around this time, the District Collector of West Godhavari in Andhra Pradesh who had established around 50 e-seva Kendrams and Rural Service Delivery Points (RSDP) at all the mandal headquarters for providing citizen to government and government to citizen services was looking to enhance the utility of these centers. Azim Premji Foundation decided to explore using computers in e-Seva Kendrams and RSDP centers for primary school children to view and learn from. By September 2, we had commenced the program in over 40 centers after training teachers in each of the schools that was attached to the center. By April 2004, we had more than 200 such centers operating in West Godavari district alone.
Learning achievement at the core
For the first time, as we moved away from
setting up Computer-aided Learning Centers in rural
schools, to using existing computer infrastructure in the villages, we
focused
our attention solely on Learning Enhancement with teachers as our
principal
partners in this venture. A two-day Teachers workshop was designed
with 40% time devoted to
program design and content development and the balance of 60% time
focused on
group discussions and evolving methods to realise Learning
Enhancement in
children. Six months down the line, the Teachers workshop has become
an
integral part of the program in reaching out to rural schools. In the
rural environment getting a center with 10 computers is a
challenge. This has resulted in the kind of adaptations that are tough
to
imagine when an urbanite thinks of computer rooms.
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Stage IV: Scaling up nationally
In February 2004, the Ministry of Human Resources, Government of India, along with the Government of Karnataka organised a two-day workshop on Computer-Aided Learning in Bangalore for government officials from all states. As partners in the Computer-aided Learning Program in Karnataka, we presented our model of reaching out to rural school children. We also offered to partner with any state government that wanted to implement Computer-Aided Learning in their state.
This offer to partner with state governments has resulted in our initiative reaching Uttaranchal, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, with the stage being set for the program to be launched in Orissa and Punjab.
The bottom line
Do children use the facility?
At the end of six months after implementation, District Collector West Godhavari wanted us to devise a method by which he could ascertain for himself if all children had the benefit of Computer-aided Learning and if they did, what was the impact of this intervention.
The District administration along with the Foundation evolved a test on computer literacy for 30,000 children between classes I and V in the 200 centers that had access to Computer-aided Learning for the past six months. The online test, conduced with software designed by the NIC team at Eluru had,
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A class wise question bank of over 100 questions for each class that covered the competencies for the class covered in Computer-aided Learning
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The software would at random generate questions for each student who entered his or her name and class
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Each child had 6 minutes time with the computer to answer questions
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The top performer in each of class was declared the winner at the center. The top performer was decided based on the number of correct questions answered in the allotted 6 minutes
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Winners at each of the center qualified for the mandal level contest
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Winners at the mandal level qualified for the district level contest
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Top 3 winners in each class at the district level are awarded a cash prize by the district administration and the foundation provides all the winners a wrist watch
Do computers aid learning?
While I believe that computer-aided learning enhances the level of learning in children, I have also been constantly on the look out for large-scale research findings that can convert this belief into an experience. In our Foundation too, this is a question that we constantly debate. In the last three years, we have undertaken and facilitated four extensive researches on this question. The findings of this research carried out over a twelve-month period by the Spastic Society of Karnataka,showed that there were improvements in social intelligence, social behavior, communication and motivation in most children. This finding is echoed across the other research findings. Moreover, these aspects are also reinforced with anecdotal evidences that one comes across on visits to these schools.
In March 2004, six months after the commencement of the program in Andhra Pradesh, a study on learning was conducted by the research team of Azim Premji Foundation. This study covered about 1000 students each in Karnataka and in Andhra Pradesh from the classes III, IV and V. For the first time we found positive impacts of computer-aided interventions on the learning achievement levels among students in Andhra Pradesh. While these findings are encouraging, we realise the need for more research on this subject. As we expand this program, in each of the states that we are going into, we have consciously built evaluation research into the implementation plan on the impact of Computer-aided Learning.
Road ahead
We have just started on the journey to leverage technology for making Learning Play, Assessment Fun and for providing Equal Knowledge for rural and urban children. In this pioneering journey, we need to change directions based on research findings on our program and learning from other similar programs. Our end objective in the use of technology is to enhance learning in elementary schools. We believe that we can ignite the desire in the child to learn. We believe that a learning child will be the foundation for establishing a just, equitable and humane society.
Author: J. Shankar is Head, Technology Initiatives, Azim Premji Foundation, India.
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