[Nepal] Teacher Preparation Program for the OLPC Project in

[Greg Smith (gregmsmi)]

Hi Bryan and Dr. Bhatta,

Thanks for the very informative update and congratulations on getting
this program launched.

I know you put in a tremendous effort over many months and you have
achieved a great accomplishment.

I look forward to more updates. 

I have a couple of questions
1 - How did you build the lesson plans? Did you use paper and pencil of
is that something you think the teachers would want to do on the XO?

2 - Did the teachers do all the "support" (e.g. explaining how to deal
with the jumpy cursor or open an activity) or did others people in the
class help? In a one day experiment in New York City the teacher thought
she needed a full time person with the kids (see:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/South_Bronx_Teacher_Feedback ) They didn't
have the custom learning activities (ePaati) or preparation you did.
Still, I wonder how much training and time you think is needed before a
teacher would be completely self-sufficient. That's especially important
to gauge for larger deployments where the XO is being delivered to
hundreds of schools at the same time.

3 - What subjects and ePaati did you use? Did the kids especially like
or use any other activities?

4 - I have a son in 2nd grade (8 years old). His class looks a lot more
chaotic than the pictures on your blog :-) I can imagine the pandemonium
in his class if the teacher handed out computers. Sounds like you have
great teachers with a strong relationship to the kids and they handled
it very well. Can you give us a little more detail on how the
interaction goes in the class? E.g. does the teacher say "we are going
to learn numbers, please click on ePaati nnnn" Then everyone clicks and
uses that activity at the same time? If you can give a little more
detail about how and when the teacher instructs with the XO that would
be helpful. 

5 - After the jumpy cursor, what was the most frustrating thing about
the XO?

6 - Did the kids use the camera? Did they use the network (e.g. look at
library server documents)?

These are not urgent questions so no hurry to get back to me. I will
keep watching the blog too.

Congratulations again! Its been a pleasure watching you take on this
challenge and deliver the first stage. Your work is very impressive. I
can tell its making an impact in Nepal and it has a strong influence
abroad as well.

Namaste,

Greg S

***********************
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 06:10:49 +0545
From: Bryan Berry <bryan.berry at gmail.com>
Subject: [Nepal] Teacher Preparation Program for the OLPC Project in
	Nepal ? Part II , Onsite training
To: olpc-open <olpc-open at lists.laptop.org>,	grassroots
	<grassroots at lists.laptop.org>,	OLPC Developer's List
	<devel at lists.laptop.org>,	Nepal <Nepal at lists.laptop.org>
Message-ID: <1209947150.7081.135.camel at dell.linuxdev.us.dell.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta posted the review of the second week of teacher
training, which took place on-site at the schools

http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/283