First week at Nepal's Test Schools

[Bryan Berry]

http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/290

written by Rabi karmacharya, exec director OLE Nepal 	


This is a compilation of observations from the first week of the laptop
implementation at the two rural schools in Nepal — Bashuki and
Bishwamitra Ganesh. After the launch of the project on April 25th, we
visited the schools for the next six days, spending entire days working
with the teachers and observing the classrooms. This was the second part
of the teacher training program, with the first part being the 4 day
residential program that was help from March 29 till April 1. Typically,
the day would start with discussion of the day’s lesson plans with the
teachers, and then we would proceed to observe the classes where the
teachers used the learning activities developed by OLE Nepal in the
daily teaching. The details of the teacher training program can be found
in Dr. Bhatta’s post. Here I will write about general observations about
the children and the laptops at the two schools.

Bashuki School

Between the two test schools, Bashuki is undoubtedly the more
challenging one. The school located near a hilltop in Lakurebhanjyang
serves a community of Tamang people, an indigenous group that inhabit
the hilly region. Most students come from poor families that depend on
agriculture and menial work to make ends meet. The literacy rate is
quite low, but the teachers are determined to change this. However, they
face a daunting uphill task to educate children from villages where
sending kids to school means losing extra hands to work the fields.
Furthermore, out of the 10 teachers, only one is from the local
community, while the rest have to trek up at least 1 hour each day to
reach the school. In this respect, the school is quite detached from the
community. Most teachers do not speak the local Tamang language, while
few understand it. Overall, it is not easy for the teachers to mix in
with the local people and interact with them.

We had distributed a total of 75 laptops - 39 to grade 2 students, and
36 to grade 6 students. During the first week of school, the attendance
was not very encouraging. Most of the week there were between 25-30
students in grade 2, and 20-25 students in grade 6. This could be due to
the fact that there was no clear indication of when classes were
supposed to begin, a typical problem faced by schools all over Nepal.
According the ministry, public schools across the nation were supposed
to start classes on April 17th, but due to various reasons, this rarely
happens in most schools. Ironically, schools are required keep
admissions open till mid-May. To make things worse, textbooks had not
been delivered to the schools till date. These are ground realities that
teachers and school administrations have to deal with in educating
children in rural areas. Nevertheless, it was quite surprising that even
the lure of the cute laptops were not enough to entice the students to
school. The teachers told us that full attendance is a rarity because
siblings take turns between going to school and staying home to help in
the fields and do household chores.

The School Management Committee (SMC) and school administration had
jointly decided not to send the laptops home with the students during
the first week. They wanted the children to get more familiar with the
laptops before they take them home with them. While we first were not
happy with the plan, in retrospect, it turned out to be a good idea
given the number of students that did not show up at school after the
distribution day. Since the students had limited time with the XO’s
during this week, they were not quite familiar with the laptops in the
classroom.

Grade 6 students at Bashuki

Bishwamitra School

This school located in a wooded area in Jyamirkot serves a mixed
community consisting of Brahmin, Chhetri, Newar, Tamang and Dalit
groups. The school has a core group of dedicated teachers who have been
affiliated with the school for over 20 years. Three of the twelve
teachers had at one time attended the school. Almost all the teachers
hail from the surrounding villages, and they are very tied to the local
community. They have close relation with the parents and the community.
People in the community put high value on education. Hence, we see that
it will be easier to successfully implement the project in this school.

Students from both grades were allowed to take the laptops home from the
very first day. Out of the 38 students in grade 6 and 22 in grade 2,
almost all of them were present throughout the first week of classes.
The teachers conducted regular classes for all grades during this
period.

Since the students had extra personal time at home with the XO’s they
were very much familiar using the XO’s in classrooms. Even the second
graders were navigating around the XO without much problem, and were
able to get to the activities that the teachers were referring to. The
sixth graders had tried out other activities besides the E-Paati
activities developed by OLE Nepal.

                      Grade 2 students at Bashuki

Dissection of Cursor Problem

We encountered the jumpy cursor problem at both schools, but there were
many more cases at Bashuki. At Bishwamitra, out of 60 laptops, there
were approximately 5-6 reports of jumpy cursor problem. At Bashuki, the
problem was found in more than half the laptops. We will go back to the
schools this week and report back on the status of the problem. We also
plan to do a more systematic collection of data regarding the cursor
problem.

One factor contributing to the higher number of cases at Bashuki is
dust. The school area is quite dusty, and in the afternoon, when the
wind picks up, there would be so much dust in the air that at times it
becomes very difficult to walk outside with your eyes open. It takes
only a few minutes before a layer of dust settles on any surface. The
classrooms have windows made out of wood, and at least one or two have
to be left open to let light into the rooms. As a result, dust particles
gather on the XO’s, and could be felt them on the touch pad. Students at
the schools were seen carrying soft pieces of cloth to wipe the screen
and touchpad.

Dust by itself may not have been a problem. In couple cases, the jumpy
cursor problem was fixed when dust was wiped from the touchpad. But when
the laptops were returned to the kids, the jumpy cursor problem
resurfaced. That is when I realized that a combination of sweaty fingers
and dust could have made it worse. Most of the kids had sweaty hands,
and with dust all around, their finger tips were not clean. Since the
touchpad work by sensing the capacitance of the finger, moist or sweaty
fingers can be problematic.

Since the other school, Bishwamitra in not in a dusty location, the
cursor problem was not as pervasive. Furthermore, the school was located
in a much cooler location, and we noticed that the kids had cleaner
hands. The couple cases of jumpy cursor problem at this school were
resolved by simply rebooting the laptops.

In almost all cases, the jumpy cursor problem could be temporarily fixed
by restarting the laptops. However, this was temporary, and the problem
would return shortly after the kids start using the laptops.

Next Steps

Bashuki School, with all its problems, represents a typical government
schools in Nepal. Bishwamitra School is more of an exception, and we
cannot expect to find schools like that when we expand the project in
other districts. So, our challenge is to find ways to make the project
successful at Bashuki, and the lessons learned there will be invaluable
to us when we reach out to similar schools in far flung districts in the
country. So how do we do it? Obviously, it requires a lot of effort from
all stakeholders, including teachers and SMC.

We can start off by having regular interactions between teachers of the
two schools. In fact this was proposed by teachers at Bishwamitra.
Teachers from each school can arrange to visit the other school. Such
visits will help teachers at Bashuki learn from the way things are done
at Bishwamitra, while the teachers at Biswhamitra can learn about the
problems faced by their counterparts at Bashuki and make suggestions to
improve the situation.

We need to start working closely with the community in Bashuki with the
help of the SMC and the school administration. It is important for the
community to understand the project and own it. The teachers had
organized an orientation program the week before the launch of the
project, but the turnout was not very good. It is also important that we
have someone communicate with the parents in the local Tamang language.
Since no one in our team knows the language, we plan to work with the
only teacher who hails from the local community. Also, the SMC consists
of mostly local Tamang leaders who can also help in reaching out to the
community.

We will also start collecting attendance data so that we can better
understand the attendance pattern. This will be essential if we are to
work with the community to figure out how to increase attendance in the
classes. We will also start collecting real data regarding the various
technical problems that are encountered at the schools.

                      Grade 2 students at Bashuki

Network and Power

The students have not yet reached the point where they are utilizing the
networking capabilities of the laptops. While this may seem odd, we have
to understand that these children have never touched a computer before.
They are still intrigued by the various games and activities that they
can access in the laptop without connecting to the network. We will soon
work with the teachers to demonstrate the mesh networking capabilities
of the laptops, as well as show them how to access the E-Pustakalaya
(electronic library) that we have built. Both the electronic library and
the Internet will be accessed via the wireless network that we have set
up to connect the schools to the Department of Education and our office.

We have not been able to have the Internet accessible from the homes.
This is the next challenge for our networking team. The students live as
far as 45 minutes walk from the school, and due to the hilly terrain, we
have not been able to come up with an affordable solution to connect the
homes to the school servers or access points.

Currently, the power adapters remain at the schools in the charging
racks. This measure was taken to prevent the loss of adapters, which can
easily be misplaced or lost. The laptops are charged fully in the
schools before the children take them home after schools. This will give
the children at least couple hours of usage time at home. We are
currently seeking replacement adapters, and when we do find them, we
plan to provide one each for the children to keep at home. Then they
will not have to carry the adapters to and from the schools, and also
will not have to plug and un-plug the adapter daily from the AC socket.

Wish List 

     1. Cursor, Cursor, Cursor. This is the main problem we have faced
        so far. It is so disheartening to watch the kids trying to
        navigate the cursor only to have it jump to a corner. If we
        cannot find a solution to this problem, we may not be able to
        get a meaningful outcome from this project. Having an external
        USB mouse is not practical due to lack of desk space. OLPC
        should consider adding pointing stick as an option for
        navigation.
     2. On-screen volume indicator that shows what level the volume is
        at when the volume buttons are pressed.
     3. The frame should not automatically appear when the cursor is
        moved to the sides or corners. This is quite unnecessary
        especially since there already is the key on upper right hand
        side of the keyboard to do get the frame to appear. I read that
        this auto-frame feature can be disabled, but we have yet to test
        it out here.
     4. OLPC should ship two power adapters with each XO - one to be
        kept at school, and one at home. This will not only reduce the
        probability of kids losing the adapters or forgetting them at
        home, but also prevent the kids from coming close to AC power
        while plugging and unplugging the adapters. The sockets that are
        available in countries like Nepal are not the best design and
        quality.

Rabi Karmacharya
Executive Director