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

Sat Nov 1 21:25:21 EDT 2008

On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 4:51 PM, Saurabh Adhikari <adhikaris at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Great idea.
>
> But let us think about this. Would you like to ask a patient how their
> disease be treated? Physicians developed their understanding by having that
> unique capability to understand disease and what may cure it. Today they do
> not discover cure. They are at best a part of a large process that cures a
> disease.

In fact, we do give patients control over their treatments. We find
that patients who read up on their conditions and are involved in
choosing their therapies tend to recover more frequently and quicker.

> Similarly, would you like the one left behind in education to tell
> us how they should be educated?

In every advanced system of education, students get to choose what
they learn from a certain age. I nearly failed third grade because I
knew how to spell and wouldn't do spelling homework. So my parents put
me into a better school, where I could make arrangements to do harder
and more interesting homework than the rest of the class.

So, in a word, yes.

> If that were the case, we will have no OLPC.

This turns out not to be the case at all.

> So may be we need to look at your idea a little differently.

You stopped just when it was getting interesting. What do you actually
propose we should do?

> Sincerely,
> S Adhikari
>
>
> ________________________________
> Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2008 15:38:49 +0530
> From: rakesh7biswas at gmail.com
> To: subbukk at gmail.com
> CC: india at lists.laptop.org
> Subject: [OLPC India] Beginning a rural school experiment inspired by OLPC
>
> 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
>
>
> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> India mailing list
> India at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india
>
>

-- 
Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams
http://www.obamapedia.org/page/polls
In landslide territory!
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children

Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
Give One, Get One, from Nov. 17
http://www.amazon.com/xo
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_Giving/International