Macedonia’s Primary Education Project (PEP)

The Primary Education Project (PEP) is a five-year initiative targeting all public primary schools in Macedonia. PEP seeks to improve the quality of instruction and increase employment skills in youth.

PEP’s ICT in Education Component is supporting the computerization of Macedonia’s primary schools by training teachers, developing maintenance solutions, providing digital content, and introducing innovative uses of ICT such as computer control, robotics, electronic music, video & audio recording.

The highlights of ICT component are that it supports the development of digital content for Macedonia’s schools and helps to adapt and localize existing applications in Macedonian and Albanian. The focus is on Math and Science, but content is created across the curriculum. This will enable students to benefit from modern technology in all subjects. PEP has also introduced innovative hardware and software solutions in selected primary schools in Macedonia. The range of hardware varies from low-cost lap-tops to electronic microscopes, music recording equipment, robots and control technology kits.

Macedonia, once the least developed of the Yugoslav republics,has been transformed into the world’s first “wireless country” of its size or larger. Through a grant from USAID, and support from Microsoft, Motorola and several other partners, AED project Macedonia Connects worked with a local internet service provider to connect every one of the country’s 430 primary and secondary schools to a wireless network. Now a vast majority—95%—of the country’s population has access to wireless, broadband internet service.

(Sources: PEP, USAID)
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Jordan Education Initiative uses ICT to transform education

The JEI is one of Her Majesty’s Queen Rania Al Abdullah’s nonprofit organizations. The JEI works hand in hand with the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Information Communication Technology (MoICT) to support Jordan’s efforts to improve the education system and its use of ICT to transform the learning environment in Jordanian schools and advance learning for all students.

Since its launch in 2003 by the World Economic Forum partners, the JEI has been involved in multimillion dollar initiatives that have had a strong impact on the modernization of education in Jordan. The JEI relies highly on partnerships and collaborations with local and global entities. The global partners include WEF, USAID, UNESCO, CISCO, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, HP, IBM, SMART etc. Direct contributions to the Initiative from global and local partners have reached over US$ 25 million.

The initiative has so far reached more than 80,000 students, up-skilled more than 3,000 teachers across 102 Jordanian Public Schools. Thousands of electronic lessons have been developed and many electronic teaching tools and equipments have been deployed in schools. The JEI has also employed SMART interactive whiteboards in its discovery schools. The JEI has also piloted installing 100 Intel Classmate PCs in discovery schools.

The JEI has not only received an award from Ministry of Education but has also received 2009 UNESCO award for use of ICT in education.

(Sources: JEI, WEF )

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India’s prototype $35 tablet for students

India, known for the “world’s cheapest” innovations, unveiled a prototype of a $35 tablet computer aimed at students.

The project is part of an ambitious education technology initiative by the Indian government, which also aims to bring broadband connectivity to India’s 25,000 colleges and 504 universities and make study materials available online.

The government even plans on subsidizing the cost of the tablet for its student which would bring the purchase price down even lower. According to Kapil Sibal, the country’s Minister for Human Resource Development, this is their answer to MIT’s $100 computer.

The Linux-based computer at first glance resembles an Apple iPad and features basic functions you’d expect to see in a tablet–a Web browser, multimedia player, PDF reader, Wi-Fi, and video conferencing ability. It has 2GB of RAM (but no hard disk, instead using a memory card) and USB ports and could be available to kids from primary school up to the university level as early as next year.

(Sources: telecentre.org, cnet news, bbc news)

The computer has been named “Nano” and has been developed through joint efforts of IISc Bombay and IIT Chennai. Although the computer itself has been developed through the interfacing of various off-shelf components yet it has been engineered to be rugged and all-weathered, suited for use by children, and can be termed as a very promising innovation. The use of opensource software and cheap hardware, memory cards instead of hard-disk, makes the promise of $10 (aimed target) somewhat plausible.
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Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Engineers

Innovation and Entrepreneurship seem like alien words in the world of College of E&ME, where walking on the layed out (SOP certified) line is “siraat-e-mustakeem”. The lack of appreciation for different personalities and their ideas, coupled with the sole benchmarking based on GPA has turned it into a stagnant system. The immediate and evident consequences of this being that the top notch students of nation coming to this college are provided with a mindset (by default) to seek jobs. Starting a new business or a venture is out of their books! Or at least a lowest grade back up. Students would even prefer low income research jobs (even though they don’t have research aptitude). A brief study of stats shows that it was not until the recession hit market cut down vacancies, that the students started thinking of doing something of their own, otherwise doing own business is out of question. Not that the students aren’t capable enough or worst non-innovative, it’s the general mindset of society, educational institute and the family that first goal set for fresh grads is to find some “cool” job – which necessarily entails some famous multinational or a permanent government job.

Breaking this ice of stagnation, Society of ICTs arranged a lecture on “Innovation and Entrepreneurship for engineers”. The guest speaker was the well-known, Mr. Adnan Shahid (president EME Alumni Association, De 14EE Graduate, Director post paid solutions at Mobilink and an MBA from MIT). The speaker had a solid IT background polished by the studies at MIT. He has been lately talking to the college administration to promote new ideas and concepts in a bit to foster entrepreneurial ventures by EMEnets. These are the earliest attempts of shifting the excessive academic focus of the college administration though. It might take much time to develop an atmosphere conducive to innovative minds to break the conventions and take up new challenges – eventually to get spin out companies formed by college graduates.

Though the lecture was held at a very short notice, the simplistic yet inspirational speaking skills of the guest kept the audience alive, interested and at the same time calling their pals to come to ECR (through SMS). Sir Adnan presented several examples of small ideas which later on changed the technology or the lives of people. Through the brilliant examples and news report clippings (from Pakistani newspapers) he explained the terms Innovation and invention as well as their link. He presented several case studies to students e.g. Facebook, his target of research, and presented his analysis of the marketing techniques Facebook guys implemented to make it such a huge success. Mr. Adnan challenged the students to come up with ideas along with their business proposals and start their own ventures. He presented the examples of content development (applications, wallpapers, ringtones etc.) for Mobilink itself. The students look forward to more of such lectures by alumni to guide them and inspire them J Society of ICTs will be working with the Alumni Liaison Committee to hold more of such lectures. Next semester a series of lectures on software development are also planned with the alumni owning software houses.

Let’s do the MTC!

A tale of five ambitious girls

Sidra, Amber, Tehreem, Hafsah and Zainab Sukhera are the ambitious girls studying in APS Quetta who, after completion of their metric exams, got a brilliant idea to use their time, ambition and intellect to use by making a difference in the society. They thought of making donations in SOS village but since there were summer vacations they couldn’t do much. They didn’t have a hefty saving of pocket money, nor were they inspired by teachers towards social work. Still they had a simple idea of establishing a Mini Tuition Club (MTC). The idea seems pretty old and banal, yet there it provides us with a food for thought! MTC is a remarkable example of the penetration power of media and advertisements. Telenor’s Karo Mumkin project with its simple yet emphatic advertisements aired on all TV channels relating to some (hypothetical) Baluchistan university making it compulsory for students to teach other students as a degree requirement to change Pakistan, might seem like a cliché’ at first (even I thought of it as a cliché’ till I got to see its impact through MTC), yet it does stimulate the thoughts of our youth to direct their energies towards bringing a change. Another example of a similar project is the “Kal ke liye aaj badlo” by Mobilink with their inspirational advertisement.

Getting back to our story of MTC, it’s not a matter of debate if these ambitious students got their inspiration from these advertisements or not, the only thing that matters is the inspiration from these advertisements coupled with their ambition led them to set up a simple tuition club. MTC was setup in C.M.H. Quetta (Baluchistan), utilizing the existing resources. The target students were those female students of mediocre families who aren’t that fortunate enough to get good teachers (as their schools aren’t that great). Since it was summer vacations, 11 students signed up for the club, due to transportation problems. The unique aspect of the club was the level of effort that was put into preparation of the lectures by the teachers (metric students).

 The teachers belong to the era of technology, it is the generation that has actually been using technology for getting education out of it, and they prepared the lectures through all sorts of online tutorials and didn’t resort to the text bookish lectures. They copied the elaborate diagrams on paper from their Google search results and gave the hand outs to the students. The administration of the hospital also provided the students with some computers to utilize them for learning. Using ICTs to improve the teaching methods (even in an indirect manner) is a success story of the technology. The students were mostly from urdu medium schools and therefore they couldn’t really get hold of the superb lectures on various science topics at online resources like Khan Academy. No worries, our crafty teachers were smart! They themselves listened to the online lectures and then compiled their handouts and lectures in accordance with it, translated into urdu, for easy comprehension of the students. The teachers also consulted various text books of O levels to use the illustrious pictures in those books for explanation, not to mention the detailed descriptions in theses better compiled books.

What these ambitious students did might not be truly ‘innovative venture’; however, they did make us realize that there are no barriers to people who want to make a change. They can bridge the digital divide by serving as a link between technology and the non computer literate student to bring the immense educational content, available online, to use.

What did these students have? They had an encouragement from their parents, knowledge of ICTs through the generation above them (brothers and sisters), an ambition to bring a change and an inspiration from TV Ads which presented to them the bigger dimension of small steps towards bringing a change and to make dreams a reality. These students have also given us a clear message that the ideas projected in TV advertisements aren’t a farfetched dream but in fact quite practical if implemented at grass root levels. They have a simple question to all readers…. “its summer vacations… Why don’t you too do the MTC”?

Author’s note: This simplistic idea is very replicable and workable. We can all really join hands to bring many new and interesting things to complement it. To teach the computer literacy the young students can be put onto the typing tutor, which will give them a leap start into the world of ICTs. It will prevent them from jumping into computer games (that might actually backfire and create problems for their parents if they insist on buying computers for themselves, which parents can’t afford). Competitions of typing can be held in students too! Next step can be to provide them with encyclopedias like Britannica etc on CDs for learning. Students of higher grade can be provided access to internet to learn and explore Wikipedia and other educational content in supervision. Every institute has some old PCs like Pentium 2 or 3s which can be given to the children for experimentation. Let us equip and teach our children to use ICTs to their learning and education.

Khan Academy — A useful online academy for students

The Khan Academy is a remarkable, one-person effort to educate the World. Salman Khan has produced over 900 videos on YouTube-covering everything from basic arithmetic to calculus, chemistry, and physics. Continuing to produce several hundred videos a year, Salman intends to provide instruction in all subjects to anyone, anywhere.

The Khan Academy started by Salman Khan, a Harvard Business School alum takes a radically different approach to education.Salman was working as a hedge fund analyst and was remotely tutoring his cousins and once his tutorials got a little famous, he ended up delivering the same (read: repetitive) tutoring to other students.He started recording the videos and put up the tutorials on Youtube. Initially, he started creating tutions using Microsoft Paint (black background/florescent colors) and later moved to sophisticated software donated by the site viewers.

“Whats amazing about Khan academy is the simplicity of operation – its a one man show. As of writing this article, there were 13 million views of the academy videos on Youtube; and the videos are visited by 100,000 students a month, averaging around 40,000 video views a day!”

Millions of students around the world lack access to high quality instruction, especially in the sciences and math. The Khan Academy provides it for free in a way that can be accessed on-demand at a student’s own pace. The videos are directly teaching tens of thousands of students on every continent on a daily basis. Other non-profit groups have even begun distributing off-line versions of the library to rural and underserved areas in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

For example of students using Khan Academy please see our other post of Mini Tuition Club.

Nepal Wireless Project — tale of an ambitious leader

Connectivity and quality access to ICTs is essential for survival in this era of digital revolution. Mahabir Pun foresaw this in 1997, when due to his immense efforts his mountain village of Nangi in Nepal first embraced computers. A simplistic website connected his village to the digital world bringing along a large number of foreign volunteers to support his cause. The project had a humble beginning with donations of used computers from Australia, Singapore and Malaysia and several design topologies for wireless connectivity being tested, details here (all with help of volunteers). The computer was assembled into a wooden box integrating the discrete components. This was the beginning of digital age for students in Nepal.

By now, his initiative has evolved into Nepal Wireless Networking Project which has connected around 42 villages in rural Nepal through wireless technologies, creating new opportunities of education, agriculture, Tele-medicine and E-commerce for the villagers providing them with an opportunity to trade goods from live yaks to handicrafts. Numerous institutions and technology firms such as the Donald Strauss Foundation, the International Center for Applied Studies in Information Technology at George Mason University, the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), smartBridges, Pacific Wireless, and others provided support in this endeavor.

Nepal wireless project is working with Open Learning Exchange for developing educational content in line of the national curricula. The main goal is to use the network for live teleteaching transmitted from one school to other schools in remote areas to overcome the shortage of quality teachers. Another aim of project is to link the health workers to the doctors and even doctors directly to the patients.

“We are using the wireless network for health, providing telemedicine services to the remote villages,” said Mr Pun.

The project is also helping establish communication centres in the Villages to enable the villagers to have VOIP calls for communication to other villages. The project has been replicated under the name of Makawanpur wireless networking project. A detailed report of the project is available here. The vision of Mahabir has inspired many people and now Himanchal Education Foundation is working to use the school as a community centre. Connected school through the wireless project would mean a connected community through connected school.

Hole in the Wall – Challenges the traditional pedagogy

Hole in the wall started of as an interesting experiment by a computer scientist, Dr. Sugata Mitra (head of research and development at the National Institute for Information Technology Limited (NIIT)), in which he installed a high tech computer on his office wall facing a slum and left it for the children to explore it. Astonishingly children learnt surfing in a single day!

In 1999 the International Finance Corporation, a World Bank subsidiary, invested $1.6 million in a project entitled ‘Hole in the Wall’, in which computer kiosks were placed in urban slums so that street children with almost no education could gain access to computer technology. They found that the children would teach each other how to use these computers. The project encourages underprivileged children in India to learn from a web-based curriculum through Internet kiosks. The kiosks were installed in over 60 locations over three years (2000-2003). The aim was to improve education for poor children, with equal access for girls and boys..

NIIT went on to conduct further studies to determine if illiterate slum children could use the Internet without instruction. The ICT-education firm set up continuous video tape monitoring of the computer that they had set up. The video showed that young boys and girls from the settlement became highly proficient at using various features of the computer regardless of lack of proficiency in English, and without any instruction. Soon it became “an extension of their playground, where they can play together, teach each other new things, and more importantly, just be themselves”

Already ubiquitous in New Delhi and Mysore, the Hole-in-the-wall systems were then spread throughout the country including the underserved areas of Rajhastan and Jaipur and the difficult terrains of Kashmir. The Hole in the wall education limited (HIWEL) has now expanded and reached upto the northern states of Mizoram and Nagaland. Such is the popularity of the project that it has crossed the borders and become a part of the commonwealth connects program in Uganda and now (according to recent news) making its way for being piloted in UK.

HIWEL has been conferred the coveted ‘Digital Opportunity Award’ for its path breaking work in spreading computer literacy and improving the quality of education at the grass root levels, by the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA).

Dr. Sugata in his talk at LIFT 2007 explains the impacts and results of his hole in the wall experiments, while a candid review of hole in the wall is presented in an article in readers’ digest. Another video report by The Guardian shows the children exploring the computers and having fun in learning.

IT@school project – Kerala, India

With a population of over 31 million, the Indian state of Kerala — home to the IT@school initiative — has more people than many countries! IT@school, which provides ICT-enabled education to 1.6 million students per year in the state, is considered by some to be the largest educational program of its kind utilizing primarily free and open source software, thereby presenting a whole new model. 

According to the official website IT@School endeavors to enhance the intellectual productivity of teacher and the curricular comprehension of students. The work of the project saw 4 million students and 0.2 million teachers empowered in ICT through a network of dedicated 200 Master Trainers and 5600 IT Co-coordinators. IT@School is the nodal agency for implementing EDUSAT (first Indian satellite exclusively serving the education sector) network and runs an exclusive channel for education called ‘ViCTERS’ (Virtual Classroom Technology on EDUSAT for Rural Schools).

The project has now associated with BSNL to provide Internet broad band connectivity to all high schools in Kerala. The success of the Project can be visualized by the conduct IT practical examination in free software for about 4 million students, first of this kind in the world with so much vast resourceful deployment of free software. The efforts of Project saw deployment of adequate IT infrastructure to all schools including computers and other accessories. Single largest simultaneous deployment of FOSS based ICT education in the world.

The project also focuses on capacity building by providing hardware and software training to teachers along with special programs to teach them the use of ICTs in education. Infrastructure up gradation is also an essential part of the project along with several E-governance initiatives. So far the project has supplied 40,000 computers to schools along with laptops, printers, scanners and generators. A recent news report also suggests that the project will provide free digital libraries to schools in Kerala soon.

The IT@School Project, of Kerala’s General Education Department has joined hands with chip giant Intel, to deploy a dual language version of the Skoool Learning and Teaching Technologies website. The platform is expected to benefit teachers and students (and parents!) in the state by providing attractive educational packages in school level Mathematics and Science, as a free Internet resource.

A snapshot of the impact of project is seen in this video and an article here. IT@School Project, through its various initiatives, has enabled the educational system to make a paradigm shift to ICT enabled education from the conventional IT education. Michael Trucano the senior ICT and Education Policy specialist at World Bank has included this project in his list of ICT initiatives in his blogpost titled ICT & Education: Eleven Countries to Watch — and Learn From.

Village Connection Project (NSN)

Nokia Siemens Networks Village Connection is a connectivity solution enabling operators to capture the rural market potential by offering affordable voice and sms service to villages for a relatively low investment, serving a dual purpose: providing access and connectivity to remote areas while helping NSN to fulfill its target of reaching 5 billion mobile subscribers’ target. The project targets population with very meager income (less than $2 per day) and provides them affordable access by making it economically viable for the telcos (by significant reduction in CAPEX). The major advantage lies in the cut down in the prices of infrastructure and equipment.

“The coverage uses modular, compact GSM Access Points, comprising radio frequency, power and a standard PC with Access Point software.”

Such is the potential of this project that it introduces a new business model for telcos. Other vendors like Huawei is also considering the Village Connection solution. The local access point is generally installed with an omni-directional antenna with customer premises equipment (CPE) which can be hosted with a local entrepreneur, moreover, very little network planning is required. Diesel powered generators and solar panels ensure power access during electric supply outages. The solution ensures that local calls are switched locally and the billing services can also be pushed to local entrepreneurs handling the equipment.

The Village Connection solution supporting voice and SMS can be easily expanded into range of value added services. Internet Kiosks provide internet access to the locals through the village connection. The inherent IP connectivity of GSM access point ensures internet connectivity. The solution has been successfully implemented in many countries, starting from India and extending out to Tanzania (by Vodafone). The brochure of Village Connection can be accessed here.