Basic Education – Integra LLC

6 Ghanian schools set for e-schooling

Six schools have benefitted from the first phase of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) e-school initiative in Ghana. This initiative aims to equip young people with the skills and knowledge they need to participate in the global economy.

Six schools in Ghana to receive e-schooling. (image: futurechallenges.org)

The selected schools were Wa Senior High School, Ola Girls Senior High School, Walewale Senior High School, Acherensua Senior High School, St Augustine’s Senior High School and Akomadan Senior High School.

According to a statement issued in Accra on Tuesday, Ghana will launch the next phase of NEPAD e-schools later this year.

A Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model was built into the e-school initiative to help tackle challenges and constraints in the NEPAD demonstration project. This is in a bid to improve on key lessons learnt from the first phase of the initiative and best practice worldwide.

A two-day Public-Private Dialogue Forum is scheduled to take place in Accra as part of the launch from March 26-27, and is expected to attract over 100 participants to discuss a new e-school PPP model.

Segun Adekoye

March 26, 2012/by actualize

Basic Education, Education, Education Partnerships, Higher Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Microsoft to bridge digital divide through African school partnership

Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it was partnering with the British Council in Africa to deliver their Africa Digital Schools Project aimed at assisting in “bridging the digital divide”, in six African countries.

The aim is to bring new technology to African schools as part of a boosting of education experiences through Microsoft’s technology (image: Education In Africa)

Called “BADILIKO,” the Swahili word for change, the aim is to bring new technology to African schools as part of a boosting of education experiences through Microsoft’s technology.

According to a statement, each company contributed $1-million as well as technical expertise to accelerate the implementation of this innovative project that seeks to embed ICT in learning.

Microsoft and the British Council stressed that the Africa Digital Schools Project will “enrich e-learning while improving ICT skills among teachers and students to boost their competitiveness in a global village.”

The $2-million seed money availed byMicrosoft and British Council will be spent on the establishment of eighty digital hubs across the six sub-Saharan countries.

It is hoped that 100,000 learners will be provided with digital tools which they will utilize to boost academic work and social skills that benefit the wider community.

Mark Matunga, the Microsoft Regional Education Manager, East and Southern Africa, says that greater uptake of ICT in learning dovetails with the software giant’s vision of bridging digital divide in Africa.

”Educators should embrace technology to pass knowledge to students and boost their aptitude in relevant areas of study. We are encouraging more teachers to be trained in ICT skills.”

Janan Yussif

January 26, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Basic Education, Education, Education, Higher Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Brookings: 7 Principles for ICTs in Ed

Photo Credit: National University of Singapore

A new working paper released by the Global Economy and Development at Brookings concludes that if smartly and strategically deployed, modern information and communications technology (ICT) holds great promise in helping bring quality learning to some of the world’s poorest and hardest-to reach communities.

As part of the Brooke Shearer Working Paper Series, the paper entitled “A New Face of Education Bringing Technology into the Classroom in the Developing World” focused on the potentials of using information and communication technologies to improve teaching and learning in the developing nations.

Using two examples of ICTs application in education from Peru and Pakistan – “failed” and “successful”, the paper stated that experience shows that while there are numerous examples of how technology is used to the great benefit of teachers and learners alike, there are also many cases in which it does little to impact educational processes and outcomes.

The example from Peru, South America recalls a number of colorful laptops sitting in a corner of a classroom covered with dust. It argues that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program which was arranged by the Ministry of Education, had the good intention of improving students’ information communication technology (ICT) skills, as well as their content-related skills through the laptops. But because there was no proper support for teacher training in how the laptops are to be used; no follow-up or repair and maintenance contingencies; and with outdated and bug-infested software, the laptops are seen as unusable and serve little purpose.

On the other hand, the successful example recalled a young girl in the small village of Hafizibad in Pakistan using her mobile phone to send an SMS message in Urdu to her teacher. After sending, she receives messages from her teacher in response, which she diligently copies by hand in her notebook to practice her writing skills. She does this from the safety of her home, and with her parents’ permission. The girl is part of a Mobilink-UNESCO program to increase literacy skills among girls in Pakistan which has shown some positive improvements so far.

Based on the above examples, the authors identified some barriers to quality education in the developing world.

Barriers to Learning for All – Primary, Secondary & Higher Education

Distance and Cost – limited availability of schools in remote, inaccessible, or particularly impoverished regions of developing countries with direct and indirect costs barriers.
Quality of Faculty/Teachers – poor quality of teacher training programs, lack of in-service training for those on the field, and lack of graduate level faculty members affect how much time teachers spend and how they teach.
Resources, Materials and Language – limited budget for tertiary education leads to poor quality teaching and learning materials, in appropriate format and language are barriers especially to the early learners.
Management – poor education system management including unwieldy teacher payment systems, limited information collection and management capabilities, and poor learning assessment processes.
Students Academically Unprepared – due to the poor quality of education at the basic and secondary levels, students entering higher education are unprepared and usually with poor performance.

The paper continues that even with the extraordinary growth in access to ICT, its use in multiple sectors of society is uneven because of certain interconnected conditions that needs to be taken care of including the following:

Enabling Conditions for Effective Technology (ICT) Use

Access to Electricity – the use of ICTs requires access to power such as electricity, solar power, batteries, etc.
Internet Connectivity – access to the Internet and wireless capabilities is key for the use of ICTs in classroom
Human Resource Capacity – the need to attract, recruit and train skilled and qualified IT professionals
Political will and Management – development of national and institutional ICT policies and the will to act on them
Financial Resources – most of the developing countries need external support in implementing successful ICT projects in the educational sector
Link between Infrastructure Availability and Ability to Integrate – these countries also need to effectively integrate ICTs into the various sectors once the infrastructure is in place.

The paper then mentioned different types of ICTs for use in education in the developing nations.

Technology Types and their Prevalence

Radio – Even though is being referred to as “old technology,” radio and radio instruction such as Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) has been utilized across the developing world as a tool to help facilitate learning and increase access to educational opportunities.
Television – Television is used to supplement classroom instruction with educational videos that teach and support lessons in language learning, mathematics, history, life skills and among other subjects.
Computers – Personal computers (PCs) are one of the most frequently cited and used forms of technology in education in the developing world and act as indicators of technological progress.
Mobile Phones – Cell phones and smart phones have been seen as increasingly useful educational tools in developing countries.
Tablets and E-readers – Tablet PCs like the iPad and ereaders are becoming a trend in education technology, and many experts see an important future for them in developing countries, due to the relatively low procurement cost.
Multimedia Projectors – These are devices used to project documents and/or computer images onto a wall in an effort to display the image to an entire classroom and allow the teacher to interact with the material along with the students, etc.
Open Educational Resources (OER) – OER are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits the free use and repurposing by others”.
Cloud Computing – Cloud computing allows organizations to increase computing capacity or add computing capabilities without needing to invest in infrastructure or train additional personnel.

The paper suggests seven guiding principles for the use of ICTs in education to be able to achieve the intended teaching and learning goal.

Seven Principles for Smart use of Technology in Education

Educational Problem First – First, identify the educational problem that needs to be addressed, and then assess which, if any, is the best technology to do the job.
Added Value – make sure that the technology will add value to other existing solutions.
Sustainability – Carefully consider the full range of enabling conditions such as the total cost of ownership, the ultimate relevance of the technology to the particular location, access to appropriate infrastructure, and human resource capacity.
Multiple Uses -Where possible, select a technology and design an intervention so that the technology can be used for multiple purposes.
Lowest Cost – While there may be many different types of technologies that can provide the assistance sought, other things being equal, it is best to select the least expensive option for the job(s) desired.
Reliability – Before deploying a technology, ensure it is reliable and will not rapidly break down. Nothing slows a project down more than unresolved problems.
Ease of Use – Finally, in educational interventions, technology should be easy to use.

It concludes that, if these principles are followed it can help avoid many future problems and, more importantly help leverage the power of ICT in educating young people in some of the poorest regions of the world.

The full paper can be accessed here.

January 6, 2012/by actualize

Basic Education, Education, Education Partnerships, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Using Blogs to Raise Funds for Education in Mali

Alberto Arzoz

In order to finance education for the children of Touareg tribe of Mali, Moussa, a writer sells his books through his blog, and then donates part of his profits and royalties for the funding of École des Sables residential schools.

Selected as one of the “Success Stories 2011”, by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) during its 2011 stocktaking, Moussa’s case study will help transfer knowledge, experiences and models for project implementation in the strategic use of ICTs for development. It confirms how the Internet is enabling cultural exchanges and the sharing of ideas on teaching methods between the Touareg community and schools in France. Such exchanges aim to develop a winning partnership between Écoles des Sables and schools from other countries around the world.

The nomadic Touareg community is one of the oldest communities in the world, but the absence of education for Touareg children restrains the development of the region. In 2002, the Ag Assarid brothers decided to create the École des Sables to offer nomadic children access to high-quality education. École des Sables gives children an education at a residential school which is open all year around while their parents continue with their nomadic lives.

At the beginning of the school year 2010–2011, 110 pupils attended the school, of which 86 were nomadic boarders. There are three classrooms and six teachers — three women and three men remunerated by the Malian government. The school applies a teaching method that targets excellence and respects local cultures. The rate of success at elementary school is 99% and at high school is 100%.

A decade after the creation of the École des Sables in Taboye, the project was expanded to two other schools in the regions of Timbuktu and Kidal. All three schools are supported by the Ministry of National Education and local communities, demonstrating the credibility of the project. For the two new schools, classrooms have been rebuilt and a residential school and high school have been set up. The three schools are all located in northern Mali.

While ICTs are being used in several ways globally to raise awareness about education, Moussa’s story is innovative and needs the necessary support for scaling up across Mali.

January 4, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Basic Education, Education, Education, Higher Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Changing Teachers’ Pedagogical Beliefs with ICT Programs

Photo: OLPC

In a pursuit to understand the core principles in successful M&E of ICT-based education programs, I spoke with Daniel Light, M&E expert at the Education Development Center (EDC). Light has evaluated EDC and USAID tech-related education programs for around twenty years. As he explains, ICT education programs are only effective to the extent that the teachers utilize ICTs for learning activities and make the student the center of focus. In other words, ICTs cannot add to education much unless the teachers utilize the tools correctly.

Traditional evaluation of education programs focuses on easily quantifiable indicators, such as teacher and student attendance, and student test scores. Though these indicators are important, Light argues that the quality of teaching and learning is not fully captured in these statistics.

Instead, evaluation should consider what researchers know about education quality, namely teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and practices. In education, teachers that focus on rote memorization and lectures are generally less effective than teachers who engage the students in activities and who adapt their lessons to meet particular students’ needs and interests.

Student-centered pedagogical beliefs are especially important in education programs that include ICTs. For example, computers are most likely to be effective tools when each student has access to a computer, and has a teacher to direct their usage. If the students aren’t the ones controlling the mouse, then much of potential knowledge to be gained is lost; they need to direct their own learning.

Photo: Microsoft

Many development funders now require randomized control trials (RCTs) to evaluate the impact of their development program. There is a problem with the emphasis on RCTs, Light argues. RCTs measure specific behaviors, but education is inherently unpredictable in its outcomes, and technology is similar in that regard. Combined, ICT education programs have many unexpected consequences. Many funders want to secure a particular impact, like increased mathematics scores, and want to do so by increasing students’ ICT usage. Light, however, contends that ICT education programs can improve mathematics scores, especially when they are directed to do so, but they will always have other impacts, unforeseeable before the start of the program.

A better way to measure the impact of ICT education programs, says Light, involves a series of phases, lasting about one year per phase. The first phase should be exploratory, to see what is actually happening in a program compared to what was originally planned. Since outsiders design many development programs, implemented programs often turn down different pathways over time. After exploring the program implementation, evaluators should fine-tune their methods, progressively tightening their measurements. They should engage in group observations, participant observations, and focus groups. Through these methods, they can design interview and survey questions, eventually measuring particular behaviors amongst the population under study. RCTs at this stage in the research process are appropriate, since the researchers should have outlined the behavior methods through their observations and discussions with participants.

When used effectively, ICTs increase educational achievement and change teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and practices. In fact, they can change teachers’ role from talking heads to activity facilitators. ICT programs, then, can easily highlight the need for pedagogical teacher change. When they are then applied to national education policy, they can bring about national curriculum changes, affecting all education practices, not just for ICT programs.

August 22, 2011/by actualize

Basic Education, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

3 Million Malawi Children

This post was co-written by Jeffrey Swindle

To improve education quality in Malawi, USAID Malawi implemented the Tikwere Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) program. The IRI program has affected over three million children and 22,000 teachers since it began in May 2007. Furthermore, management and financing of the program is now moving to the hands of the government, letting USAID allocate its efforts to additional endeavors.

Despite promising increases in primary education enrollment (54% to 70% from 1999 to 2006) in Sub-Saharan Africa, the quality of education is quite low. High teacher and student absence rates, as well as low achievement scores, plague education systems. When researchers make unannounced visits to schools, teachers are absent on average 19% of the time, with higher rates in rural areas.

In Malawi, the situation is particularly grim. According to the Southern Africa Consortium on Monitoring Education Quality (SACMEQ), fewer than 25% of eligible Malawian children remain in school by grade 8. In addition, only 9% of primary school students were found to have reached a minimum level of mastery in reading in English, and a mere 2% of pupils possessed skills beyond basic numeracy.

Teacher at the chalkboard speaking with students. Radio on a chair nearby

Photo credit: USAID/Malawi

To address these challenges, USAID Malawi began the IRI program. In the program, schools are provided with radios, and they listen to a thirty-minute national broadcast each day. Teachers receive text messages on their phones telling them the weekly schedule for the in-service broadcasts prior to the beginning of the term, and through lesson plans produced by Tikwere teachers are informed about what materials they will need to prepare beforehand (posters, pencils, textbooks, etc.). The broadcast focuses on one of three topics: the local language Chichewa, English, and life skills. The broadcasts are prepared professionally and incorporate ideal teaching strategies, including group work, learner-focused discussions, and gender balanced teaching. By listening to the broadcast, teachers learn how they can be most effective. And the students benefit because they receive training from an optimal teacher via radio each day.

Amongst these learners there have been increases in test scores for standard 1 learners in literacy (17% points higher in English and 9% points higher in Chichewa compared to non-participating students) and mathematics (12% points higher than non-participating students).

Teacher pointing at chalkboard, while radio plays.

Photo credit: USAID/Malawi

Additionally, they are particularly engaged during the radio broadcasts; the students anxiously look forward to this special time each day and enrollment has been rising in Tikwere schools which cover over 95% of the 5,300 schools nationwide.

To implement the program, USAID purchased 13,000 freeplay radios which are solar powered at a total cost of $386,400 over a course of three years. Additionally, printed materials to accompany the activities and radio airtime required additional funding. Using conservative estimates, over 2,000,000 children listening to the broadcasts for the first three years. If the same rate of expansion of the project continued, the IRI program affects far more than 3,000,000 million children in Malawi. The total cost per student per year is $0.16, a bargain for improved educational achievement and teacher effectiveness. Currently, the USAID mission to Malawi is working with the government to incorporate the program into the national education plan and finances, making the program financial sustainable without further support from USAID.

Table: Project Total Estimates from Macro International

The final impacts of the IRI program, however, are yet to be measured. Macro International conducted a mid-term evaluation of the project in 2009. Though the IRI program was able to reach approximately 75% of schools in Malawi, at least 10% do not have the connectivity for the radios to work, and the costs were too high and complicated for USAID to provide alternative technologies for IRI. In an ingenious strategy, Tikwere uses this 5% as a control comparison for the learner assessments of the IRI program. Thus far, schools with the Tikwere IRI program show a 17% gain in scores over the control schools.

Photo credit: USAID/Malawi

Originally Zambia implemented the IRI methodology for the out of school program. Because of IRI’s potential for success, the government there adopted it in the conventional schools. Malawi’s experience is adopted from the Taonga Market in Zambia, and other USAID missions have implemented similar programs as well. Hopefully, more missions around the world will implement similar radio programs and see equal impacts.

July 15, 2011/by actualize

Basic Education, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Its All About Radio in South Sudan

Photo: NDI

ICT4E projects are needed in South Sudan for two major reasons: (1) the majority of the population is illiterate, and (2) 83% reside in rural areas. Illiterate adults and rural populations can both be served via radio services. Adults can listen to the radio while completing other tasks and people in rural areas often do not have access to education among primary school, as the distance to secondary schools is too large. Some radio projects have already been conducted in South Sudan, but their success is unknown.

Map: Mohamed El Bashir Hiraika

The current status of education in South Sudan among the 8.26 million people in South Sudan is particular grim, as seen in the national survey collected in 2009.

52 students per teacher
129 students per classroom
37% of the population above the age of six has ever attended school
27% of those 15 years and above are literate.
The literacy rate for males is 40% compared to 16% for females
53% of the urban adult population is literate, compared to 22% of the rural adult population
40% of the population between 15-24 is literate. The literacy rate for males in this age group is 55% compared to 28% for females.

With support from UNESCO, UNDP, and UNICEF, a few preliminary ICT programs in the national education system of Sudan proper have been implemented. However, many of the projects were cut short as a result of conflict, funding, and a lack of communication among associated parties. Others focused primarily on built capital, such as bringing computers to as many schools as possible, while neglecting social capital, like training people to use the computers well. Internet connections in schools, as well as Internet literacy training courses, were extremely limited in these programs. A few of the projects, as documented in a 2007 InfoDev report, are listed below. However, there has been a lack of monitoring and evaluation of the projects. Subsequently, it is unclear whether and to what degree the projects were successful in South Sudan.

Civic Education via Radio for Southern Sudan: In partnership with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), Education Development Center Sudan Radio Service has developed a new civic education radio series that will increase listeners’ knowledge of political developments and also promote increased discussion of political developments, tolerance of diverse viewpoints, and non-violent solutions to complex problems.
Sudan Radio Service: As part of an effort to increase the participation of the southern Sudanese, the Sudan Radio Service provides access to balanced and useful information through radio-based education and entertainment programs presented by local presenters in several local languages.
dot-EDU Southern Sudan Interactive Radio Instruction (SSIRI) Program: This program designs, develops, and pilot-tests appropriate and cost-effective technologies such as interactive radio instruction in an effort to provide learning opportunities for children, adults, and teachers in southern Sudan.

July 8, 2011/by actualize

Basic Education, Education, Higher Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Workforce Development, Youth Development

Open Educational Resource for Developing Countries

By now you’ve probably heard of Sal Khan, or at least his Khan Academy. The former hedge fund manager turned education guru has been featured on PBS News Hour, CNN, NPR, NBC News, and most recently, was invited by Bill Gates to speak at TED.

Photo Credit- CNN

There is no question that the Khan Academy’s approach is innovative. And it certainly has the potential to change the way people think about education. Sal Khan mentions in his TED Talk his desire to “flip” the classroom – where students learn the materials at home, then come to school to get extra help with the problems and mastery.

But many of the news reports on the Khan Academy stress the usage of these videos around the world – so what kind of impact could it have in developing countries?

The Khan Academy is an example of an Open Education Resource (OER), free to use teaching and learning content. Like all OER the Khan Academy has incredible potential in the developing world, while facing extreme challenges.

Benefits of OER

Reduced costs – online, digital resources can be significantly less expensive than text books, and they can be changed edited easily to accommodate changes in the curriculum. Examples include CK12 FlexBooks and Lulu.com .
Continuous improvements- the usage patterns of many digital products can be monitored and used as feedback. The Khan Academy is a perfect example of this- Khan found that students stopped watching some videos at certain points, so he went back and changed the content in those spots, resulting in decreased drop offs, and increased course (video) completion.
Learning Efficiency- students can learn at their own pace by stopping and starting the videos, going back to cover ground they may have missed, or skipping material they already know
Accessibility- videos can be captioned as well as translated into other languages. Youtube now provides captioning, and dotSUB can translate captioned material into multiple languages.
Localization/Personalization- in many cases digital material can be created or customized to fit local culture and context. Teacher Education in SubSaharan Africa (TESSA) is one example.

But while these benefits are amazing and transforming, getting this content to students in the developing world is tough.

Challenges:

Infrastructure – it goes without saying that students must have access to the equipment and connectivity to access materials.
Discoverability – finding out about various materials online can be difficult.
Quality – not all OER are created equal!
Accessibility – although the very nature of many digital product makes it possible to be fully accessible (closed captioning for videos, screen readers for text, multiple language support, etc), not all producers think of these things, nor do all end users have the right equipment
Interoperability – being able to use materials on any operating system, platform or device is vitally important in the developing world
Sustainability – not only for the producers of the content (how will they stay in business) but for the end users (What kind of personnel are needed to implement a program? What happens if the resources they are counting on stop being available?)

We are just beginning to see how OER can impact students and teachers around the world. Some traditional systems and institutions may be slow to adopt, while others may see these resources as innovative solutions to long standing problems.

May 3, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Basic Education, Education, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

New Toolkit helps schools establish, maintain and expand computer facilities

Across the world, governments, donors, private companies, parents and schools are establishing computer facilities and connecting them to the Internet in an effort to improve education. Although well intentioned, a common result of these efforts is the challenge schools have in keeping their computers running, covering increased costs for electricity, paying for Internet connectivity and integrating the use of computers into the curriculum.

The Computer System Sustainability Toolkit is designed to help staff, students and parents at schools gain the skills needed to develop and implement plans to establish and/or sustain their computer systems. The Toolkit is written so that members of the school and community can create and implement their plans without additional external support.

Does this Toolkit work? Can computer facilities at schools really become self-sustaining entities? Can schools really generate sufficient income from their facilities to keep their systems running, to buy new equipment, and to build the capacity of their staff to use the computers? Can schools really learn to integrate the use of their computers across their curriculum? And can they do all this on their own?

The short answer to these questions, at least according to the initial evidence, is YES!

The content from the Toolkit was first used with the staff and students at five rural schools in Southern Sumatra as part of a small project that was funded by Qualcomm Wireless Reach. Before this effort, most of the computers that had been installed at these schools a year earlier were not working, the schools were no longer connected to the Internet and the IT teachers were the only teachers at these schools who were using the computers with students. Now, three years later, all the computers at these schools are fully functioning, the labs are well maintained, most teachers at these schools now use the labs with their students and each school has a well established Student Support Technicians Club (SSTC). And all this has been done with funds generated through the use of their computer facilities.

Digital copies of the toolkit in color and grayscale, along with a variety of tools and templates can be downloaded online at: http://aed.org/Publications/computer-system-sustainability-toolkit.cfm

March 23, 2011/by actualize

Case Studies

Contact Details

Quick Links

About

Expertise

Impact

Join

Sign up for Updates