Director General and other officials from DoE
with representatives from OLE Nepal and WFP
at Selaling, Dadeldhura
• Mar 2-6, Dadeldhura: A team consisting of officials from the Department of Education (DoE), the World Food Programme (WFP), and OLE Nepal visited program schools in Dadeldhura. The purpose of the visit was to study the feasibility of expanding the program to two more schools in the district. The team consisted of the Deputy Director of DoE Mr. Baburam Poudel, who is also the government's focal person for the OLPC project, WFP's Country Programme Coordinator, Ms. Pramila Ghimire, and OLE Nepal's Executive Director, Mr. Rabi Karmacharya. The team was joined on the fourth day by the Director General of the DoE, Mr. Haribol Khanal, who took time out of his busy schedule to spend three days in Dadeldhura to gather first hand knowledge about the program. He was accompanied by the Chief District Education Officer of Dadeldhura, Mr. Ram Hari Das Shrestha. In addition to visiting one program school and one prospective school, he met with officials from the DEO to discuss ongoing education activities in the district.
  
  
   

Children using XOs in Sri Jana Kalyan School in
Tukche, Mustang District
• Feb 22-Mar 6, Mustang: The program schools are now entering the second year of the OLPC project. 59 new laptops were deployed in Mustang district, bringing the total there to 418 XOs for students and teachers and 7 for government officials at the District Education Office. Deployment of XOs took place earlier there than in other program districts because of the different academic cycle in the cold mountainous regions. Our program now covers grades 2, 3, 4 and 6 there. Laptops given to last years' grades 2 and 3 students rose up a grade with them and new laptops are being given to incoming students of grade 2.
   
   

Participants of refresher training in Mustang
• Feb 24-27, Mustang: Refresher Training for Mustang district was held at Janahit Higher Secondary School, Jomsom. There were 42 participants, which included 36 teachers from the program schools and 6 officials from the District Education Office. The training was conducted jointly by trainers from OLE Nepal and National Center for Education Development (NCED). Also, Deputy Director of the Department of Education Mr. Baburam Poudel attended part of the program in Mustang. He collected feedback and suggestions from the teachers as well as the district officials and expressed a firm commitment to continue the effort to integrate ICT-based approach in Nepal's education system.
  
  
  
  

Interaction with CDC officials

• Feb 26, Lalitpur: A workshop was organized for CDC officials at Yalamaya Kendra in Patan Dhoka. The agenda was to update CDC officials on the latest content development happening at OLE Nepal and to get their feedback. Also on the table was a discussion about designing comprehensive courses, with detailed guides for teachers on integrating ICT into their regular teaching process. The aim is to help teachers understand the linkages between lessons- both e-paath and textbook- and the curriculum. The CDC officials present at the workshop were very receptive to the idea and gave useful feedback.
  
  
   

Network team putting up an antenna on a
tree top to connect schools to the Internet
at Kapilvastu

• Feb 16-26, Kapilvastu: OLE Nepal's network team connected schools in Kapilvastu to the Internet. They are the first government schools in the district to have access to the Internet.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Teacher conducting an ICT-integrated practice
lesson during refresher training in Kapilvastu

• Nov 22-25, Dadeldhura, Kapilvastu, Kavre, Lalitpur and Makwanpur: Residential refresher training sessions on ICT-integrated teaching using OLPC laptops and OLE Nepal’s original content were held at five of our program districts. In attendance were teachers and principals from program schools and representatives from the respective District Education Offices. [more]
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   

Presentation on OLE Nepal by Rabi
Karmacharya at OLE Assembly [more photos]
• Nov 2-7, Kathmandu: Open Learning Exchange Global Assembly: A six day global conference of Open Learning Exchange centers from around the world begins on 2nd November at the Everest Hotel. [more]

Download Press Release   [English]  [नेपाली]

Children in Dadeldhura using XOs for the
first time

• Apr, Dadeldhura, Kapilvastu, Kavre, Lalitpur and Makwanpur: Residential teacher training sessions for all program schools and officials from District Education Offices (DEOs) were held at the respective districts. OLPC XO laptops were then given out at each of the schools, to students as well as teachers and DEO officials. Approximately 2000 XOs were deployed.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Government trainers trained as part of
OLE Nepal's capacity building initiative

• Mar 22-25, Kathmandu: A four day training of trainers workshop, the first part of OLE Nepal's teacher training to integrate E-Paati (XO laptops) and OLE Nepal content in classrooms, was conducted at National Centre for Education Development's (NCED) training center in Sano Thimi. This training was designed to train master trainers from the Ministry of Education’s teaching training body, NCED, for the first round of OLPC laptop deployment. The training covered a wide range of topics including IT literacy, classroom arrangement and management, challenges in using laptops in the classroom, maximizing use of laptops both at home and school, non-technical issues and their possible solutions and parents and community awareness. [more]
   

• Feb 28, Lalitpur: OLE Nepal has publicly launched its education focused digital library, E-Pustakalaya.
  E-Pustakalaya can be accessed at (www.pustakalaya.org) has now been launched publicly with some basic features and content; more content as well as features will be added in the future. [more]
   

Education experts at the teacher training
manual preparation workshop
• Dec 23-25, Lalitpur: OLE Nepal organized a three day workshop to prepare the teacher training manual for the next round of OLPC laptop deployment. Participants included experts from the National Center for Education Development (NCED) as well as officials from the Department of Education (DoE)’s OLPC team. Teachers from the two test schools- Bashuki Lower Secondary School and Vishwamitra Ganesh Secondary School – were also invited for a day to share their experiences to shed light on the challenges faced so far, and to give suggestions on how the training program can be made more effective and relevant with regards to introducing ICT-integrated education in classrooms in Nepal.