[OLPC India] Beginning a rural school experiment inspired by OLPC

[Rakesh Biswas]

*If we can create threads around specific issues faced by village schools,
school committees and NGOs and how ICT solved them, then we could make some
real progress towards building world-class learning environment for every
child.
*
Thanks Subbu for raising this.

I am not sure if this is the issue you had in mind but I would just like to
mention how I was inspired by the OLPC idea to try out a rural school
experiment.

I am a physician teacher presently involved in trying to create a system of
"User driven health care" in rural India by utilizing rural school children
to interview their parents and create their basic electronic health records
( to start with in the form of a story of their parent's lives) as a part of
their co curricular activity.

At present although the rural school where I visit doesn't have a single
computer I feel if we just made a beginning using paper and then follow up
these parents/patients utilizing a weekly evaluation of the data the
students gather from their parents (again on paper to begin with) we could
eventually create a record base that would definitely create patient
awareness and improve health care outcomes (particularly as at present we
have very little foreground information on the patients we get to interview
only for a few minutes in a busy outpatient department). It would off course
be also useful for health education at a primary school level (where
students learn from their parents experiences on health).

I have been lucky in finding a rural school principal who has been giving
full support to the idea and we soon hope to see how it develops.

Hope to hear from others who may be interested to see if it can be developed
in their own schools for which I would be glad to provide details on
operational strategies.

rakesh

Rakesh Biswas MD
Professor,
Department of Medicine,
People's college of medical sciences,
Bhanpur, Bypass road,
Bhopal-462010 (M.P.) India
Office Tel: +91 - 755 - 4005210
Office Fax: 91 - 755 - 4005112
Residence:+91-755-2682502
Mob:9755619861
email:rakesh7biswas at gmail.com <email%3Arakesh7biswas at gmail.com>


On 11/1/08, K. K. Subramaniam <subbukk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Saturday 01 Nov 2008 10:38:34 am Satish Jha wrote:
> > How do banks finance education? It did not exist in the country just a
> few
> > years ago.. Now the banks finance @$50,000 per year for students who can
> > get admission overseas.. How did that happen??
> Not a good example because it deals with students who have completed basic
> education. Even assuming they did, this scheme will not scale to hundreds
> of
> millions of children.
>
> > Rs 15,000 can be a huge thing and can be a small thing..
> It is way beyond affordability by rural communities. The current per-capita
> income of land-holding farmers in Karnataka is about INR 10,500 [1]. The
> Education Department in Karnataka allocates INR 7,500 per child with INR
> 450
> going towards learning environment.
>
> [1] http://www.hindu.com/2008/02/01/stories/2008020154340600.htm
>
> > I spoke to the IT minister of another country and suggested they should
> go
> > to IDA and raise funds at low interest rates with a 12 year moratorium.
> > They are moving in that direction. Will the Indian education minister or
> IT
> > minister think along those lines?
> Primary education interventions are best done at state level due to the
> large
> variations in language, culture and education infrastructure.
>
> BTW, I would prefer if we can get back to discussing possible deployment
> scenarios rather than broad economics. Because of the huge variations in
> educational infrastructure, aggregation tends to gloss over show stoppers
> at
> community level.
>
> If we can create threads around specific issues faced by village schools,
> school committees and NGOs and how ICT solved them, then we could make some
> real progress towards building world-class learning environment for every
> child.
>
> Subbu
> _______________________________________________
> India mailing list
> India at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india
>
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