The success that OLE Nepal has achieved in ICT-based education can mainly be attributed to the fact that we have placed EDUCATION in the center, rather than technology. We have recognized that technology is the medium and the tool to improve education standards and access, and hence have always relied on educationists, teachers, curriculum experts and students to design, develop and refine our solutions. OLE Nepal is conducting a number of ICT based education projects to ensure effectiveness and greater impact from its overall program.
School Implementations
OLE Nepal launched the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program in Nepal’s public schools in 2008 in partnership with Nepal Government’s Department of Education. The program is currently running in 34 schools in ten districts, and includes OLE Nepal’s recent introduction of shared-model implementations in two schools (across two districts). Overall, the program covers students from grades two to six benefiting more than 4000 students. All the schools have local servers containing digital library and interactive learning resources, and the schools are equipped with power backup and access points for students and teachers to easily access the materials in the servers. The program has already trained close to 200 teachers on successfully integrating ICT in classroom teaching, and installed networks at the schools to facilitate ICT-based education.
In the shared-model implementations, students from different classes share a set of laptops but each student has one-to-one access to laptops and digital resources. The shared-model has been proposed based on the lessons learned over the past three years. In addition to significant cost savings, what this model makes is easier for schools and teachers to manage the programs.
Digital Content
Education content is at the core of OLE Nepal’s ICT-based education program. Without relevant content, there is very little that users can achieve from computers beyond basic IT literacy. Since our goal is not to teach students on how to use computers, but to use technology to improve the way students learn, it is important to prepare content that can be used for the purpose. OLE Nepal has two types of content, E-Paath and E-Pustakalaya.
E-Paath is a collection of digital education materials prepared by OLE Nepal, that are designed to be used by teachers to fulfil learning objectives outlined in the curriculum, as well as fully exploit the power of multimedia by integrating text, images, audio, and animation to make learning both fun and effective. The activities are child-centered, tailored to the Nepali context (e.g., the Nepali language is used and the pictures and images also reflect Nepali settings), open source (i.e., users are free to modify, enhance, and tailor these activities according to their needs), multimedia based and fun to use.
E-Pustakalaya is an education-focused electronic library which contains books, full-text documents, images, videos, audio clips, and educational software. It is designed specifically with school aged kids in mind, but holds materials that can be used by teachers, general readers, and researchers alike. The library is accessible through the OLE Nepal network to the schools, and on the Internet to other users.
Teacher Training
OLE Nepal recognizes that teachers hold the key to the success of any program at the schools. Unless teachers are fully comfortable and confident with this new approach to teaching, the initiative will have limited impact on the teaching-learning process. With that in mind, OLE Nepal has developed and delivered training programs to help teachers integrate laptops and digital learning materials in classroom teaching. One key goal of this program is to prepare teachers to move away from the traditional paradigm of teachers as fountain of knowledge to new one where they are facilitators in students’ learning process.
Network Infrastructure
OLE Nepal’s goal is to establish a connection between the schools, and to OLE Nepal central server in Kathmandu in order to make it possible to update new activities at the schools, create a communication link between all the above nodes, and also receive feedback and data from the pilot schools. All the schools that OLE Nepal is working with within the pilot phase are already connected to a network and a large number of them have also been connected to the Internet.
Capacity Building
OLE Nepal has worked in partnership with various central and local level agencies within the Ministry of Education system to ensure that they build the necessary institutional capacity to implement ICT-based Education on a national level. Such partnerships have also underscored the important roles that various experts within the system have in successfully expanding this new medium of teaching-learning. The project has gained tremendously from the inputs provided by government trainers, curriculum experts, district level school supervisors, resource persons and teachers. The OLPC project was implemented in partnership with the Department of Education and the District Education Offices in the program districts. The DoE and OLE Nepal has also worked together to promote awareness about ICT-based Education. Teacher trainings have been conducted with help of government trainers who were prepared in providing ICT-based Education training. The training package was a result of numerous interactions with government trainers, curriculum experts and other officials, along with constant feedback from teachers. OLE Nepal has constantly consulted with subject experts from the Curriculum Development Center in the preparation and review of the E-Paath activities. All in all, OLE Nepal has always opted to work with and empower existing resources within our public education system instead of creating a parallel system. We believe that such an approach will help scale the program in future.
SchoolTool
SchoolTool is an open source web-based administrative software for schools to maintain student information system including grades and attendance, to organize a centralized school calendar and to generate various reports. OLE Nepal has localized SchoolTool to meet the needs of schools in Nepal, and has prepared user manual and training program to prepare teachers on using the software. OLE Nepal views this as yet another dimension in leveraging technology to facilitate teachers in carrying out their work efficiently. OLE Nepal views this as yet another dimension in leveraging technology to facilitate teachers in carrying out their work efficiently. SchoolTool allows teachers to keep track of student attendance, grades and performance, while organizing their classes through the use of calendar, journal and report generations.